Wilder English Final

Idea of expertise

In the reading titled "The Idea of Expertise: An Exploration of Cognitive and Social Dimensions of Writing" it successful breaks down the idea of expertise into two commonly known dimensions of writing. These dimensions are specifically on page 265 where it states "Cognitive rhetoric founded on information-processing theories of psychology proposes a concept of composition that stresses general knowledge." This is the first dimension of writing and essentially deals with obtaining expertise in writing through general skills, knowledge, and heuristics. The second dimension is "Social Rhetoric, based on social theories of knowledge, suggests a concept that stresses local knowledge." Opposite to the first dimension this dimension simply stresses gaining expertise in writing through particular local or contextual information specific to that domain. Carter sets up his reading by first giving us these two dimensions in order to propose his pluralistic theory of expertise that says expertise is a combination of these dimensions. One cannot obtain expertise without the expense of local or general dimensions. Continuing onward with Carter's pluralistic definition of expertise Carter divides expertise into 5 stages. The first stage being when the novice applies context free rules to complete a piece of writing. This stage I assume almost every English major has encountered themselves in some point of their career. The advanced beginner stage occurs when the novice applies more sophisticated strategies based on their former experiences in a given situation. The third stage competence occurs when there is a reduced reliance on general skills and more of a reliance on hierarchical decision making. At the fourth stage performance relies mainly on familiarity and intuition with the given domain. And writer at this stage exhibits little to no use of general knowledge and skills. At the fifth stage an expert reacts intuitively for most situations due to familiarity and knowing the "ins & out's" of the particular domain. Carter's breaking down of expertise is vital to understanding this research article's purpose. What carter describes here is a continuum of expertise. Rather than look at expertise as this linear thing Carter proposes gauge expertise on a continuum that encompasses both General and Local knowledge. The best way to describe this continuum would be to having General knowledge as "Freezing" and Local knowledge as "boiling." If you view expertise in this way essentially the more you become familiar with a particular domain you essentially melt off the ice also known as general knowledge. Understanding this some may say "so is local knowledge what you really only need to become and expert?" The answer is yes and no. It is true when it comes to a specific domain, the only way to truly become an expertin it is through full control and acquisition of local knowledge in the given domain, but only at the expense of general knowledge will you be able to work yourself through that domain especially if it's something new and unfamiliar to you. What carter is essentially alluding in the conclusion of his article was that Hass and Flowers may have been on to something. Only through the consistent process of wearing out refined general knowledge skills in a particular domain is how to obtain expertise. A few questions I did have for us as a class was where in the stages of expertise did you feel like you fall in most domains throughout your college experience? As an english major after reading this article our role as writers seem that much more overwhelming cause when if ever will we obtain enough local knowledge in a given domain to be deemed an expert? This leads me to think about how individuality plays a key in writing ,because while due to personal and previous experiences I may have a vast knowledge in Anime the next student who may never watched an anime ever would have to use their general knowledge and strategies to produce writing; versus mine that's based off of pure intuition. I would also like to ask on the teaching application of this idea. How can we get students to become experts in reading or writing? Is it just a refinement of the general strategies paired with bits and pieces of important local knowledge? Or the opposite? How can we determine what pieces of local information will be useful to our students and future english majors when gearing them towards expertise?

Rose "Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language: A Cognitivist Analysis of Writer's Block"

The beginning of Rose's article starts out by talking about Ruth and her process of writing while she struggles with writer's block. After expressing Ruth's struggle to write her essay, Rose goes on to further explain that Ruth is a part of his study. A study in which he takes ten undergraduates from UCLA (five with writer's block, ten without) with different backgrounds based upon class (low, middle and upper) and race (third world to Caucasian origins), alongside with grade point averages (C- to A+) and majors (Biology to Fine Arts). All ten could write efficiently and were enrolled in at least one course that required them to produce a good amount of writing material. Rose then goes on to discuss what separated the students through the interviews he had with them (roughly 1 to 3 interviews per student) in which he used notes, drafts, and finished compositions to format his questions. Blocks and non blockers would write essays and be taped simultaneously, they would then all be shown their tapes immediately after writing and thus be questioned about their writing behaviors. Those with writer's block struggled to complete their essays and often turned in very rushed ones for that matter, resulting in low grades that didn't reflect their writing abilities and often made them feel self conscious about their writing in general. The reason for this writer's block was that the five who experienced it were following writing rules or strategies that prevented the enhancement of their process of writing. Those who didn't experience writer's block still followed these rules, however, they didn't follow them as strictly, thus resulting in a more "functional, flexible, writing style in which they were more open to information from the outside world" (pg 390). Rose then goes on to explain the key terms we need to know. Introductory, Processing, and Solution period. Alongside how his article will be focusing on the Processing period and be focused more on Rules and Plans. This portion didn't make much sense to me and I honestly didn't know why it was included as it seemed to just go off track us from the study in general. THE BLOCKERS Ruth stated "grammatically correct sentences aren't useful" and the beginning was taught to her to be the most important, as a good essay catches the reader's attention immediately from her teachers/professors Laurel's essay was weeks overdue, some sections well written with stylistic flare, however, her prose seemed rushed.She includes a paragraph containing information in the paper that was never mentioned in the topic paragraph. "You must always make three or more points in an essay, or else your paper is not strong" taught that both high school AND in first college english course Martha (bio background), will not put paper to pen until she has spent two days creating an outline that is deemed acceptable to her. These outlines only led to self-defeat, as they were too complex and all the information could not fit into an essay (pg 394 third paragraph last sentences) Martha's 'rage for order' also makes her believe that every story/poem is linear, she often forces a meaning to things that don't necessarily have a meaning Mike's problems are rooted in the distortion of problem solving too. If the assignment matches his expectations then he believes he has done a good job of figuring out what the professor wants, if not, he can not easily shift his approach. He must formulate a plan and stick to it in order to feel successful overall. Mike is the one in the group that has more global troubles. Sylvia, will spend up to five hours focusing JUST on the beginning paragraph. Has trouble focusing on which rules she wants to use. Cognitive perplexity. Having to make a choice literally causes her writer's block. Ruth, Laurel, and Slyvia all believe that the beginning paragraph holds the most weight in producing a successful paper THE NON-BLOCKERS Oddly enough, the non-blockers were first referred to as a group, instead of student by student like the blockers. I wonder why this is so. . . Dale, Ellen, Debbie, Susan, and Miles also wrote with the aid of rules, but did not follow them as strictly. They tend to be aware of the rules, but also break them to a degree, stating things like if they are stuck to just keep writing, to write things you do and do not know about, and to omit things that don't work rather than trying to force them into their essays. All five students possess problem solving plans, but unlike the blocker's, they don't strictly stick to them. Opting out of procedures and outlines if they know they will not work. Ellen and Susan seem to also go in with an outline in mind, but are readying to change it if need be. Rose states that students who seem to offer the least precise rules and plans have the least amount of trouble when it comes to composing their essays Questions Asked In Class: 1.) Do you feel your college experience has helped to improve your process of outlining and writing a paper? Do you even outline a paper at all? Where do you begin your paper? We as a class felt that our college experience did help us to improve our process of outlining a paper and we all acknowledged that we all had different ways of doing so. Some students started with an outline and others did not. Some of us started with our body paragraphs and some started with the beginning or conclusion paragraphs. A student stated, "When I was writing my college essay I experienced writer's block, and I ended up writing about a life surgery in order to clear my thoughts and then returned to my paper prompt". Other classmates statements: "I just write whatever, but at least I have that part started. I just wrote my thoughts down and it came to me!" "More so before college I experiences writer's block due to following the rules too strictly. Now I form my ideas first and then write my intro based upon the ideas I have already written down." "Ideas come to you when least expected, like when showering or driving." "I had a professor give me a six page paper assignment. I felt like I answered the prompt in three, so then I had three extra pages of repetition just so I could fill the page requirement." 2.) When reading this article, I often thought about how weird it was that the article seems to take a dive into the study by mentioning Ruth and then jumping into key terms. Do you feel this should have been briefer? Did you run into this issue of confusion? Do you feel like the beginning portion of the article should have been omitted? It became more apparent through our in class discussion that these key terms were needed, however, as Christina stated, ""he has an obnoxious structure, but if he didn't start it that way it would have been boring". We did agree however that this section should have been briefer and that some things were absolutely unnecessary. However, we also brought up that Rose's definition of 'writers block' could be heavily argued as being biased.

A Stranger in Strange Lands: A College Student Writing Across the Curriculum.

The main idea of the study is to ask about the nature of writing processes. How students write in school. How students created appropriate texts in various courses and how they produced them. Some questions that McCarthy began with: How do students figure out the requirements for a professor over the semester? How does this affect their own process? Dave Garrison: College Junior Bio/Pre-med major at a private liberal arts college. 502 Verbal 515 Math Considered typical among his class Courses: Freshman Composition (2x a week for 90 minutes): students were required to write a series of five essays on topics of their own choice. The length was 2-4 pages. (WCI). Intro. to Poetry (2x a week for 90 minutes): three 6-page critical essays on poems that students chose. Cell Bio. (2x a week for 90 minutes, 1x 3-hour lab): required to write a series of short papers, three. 3-5-page journal reviews. The students had to follow the five-part scientific format. Pg 234:"Rules of the game" In each classroom, a student must play by the rules of the game of a given professor. Figuring out what is an appropriate writing style for that professor's course. Writing is a social activity. Much like speaking, writers use means of communication considered appropriate by members of particular speech or discourse communities. Conventions that are presupposed. How appropriately you respond to these conventions is how you're evaluated. McCarthy, instead of coming in with a clear hypothesis, she studied the writing being assigned: understanding the writing, how it functioned in each classroom, respectively, and what people took in the class took it to mean. McCarthy alludes to several studies on page 235, second to last full paragraph, that examined this idea of particular classroom contexts for writing. The studies show that these students will encounter a vast number of different writing situations, but they apply a similar method to each form of writing because it's what their interpretation of writing is. This study shows how one college student fares in the "journey across the curriculum." McCarthy monitored the student's behavior across tasks in three classroom contexts and how those contexts influenced the success of the student. She also acknowledges that the study is limited in scope to a single student. She interviewed Dave and his two friends and three professors. Questions stemmed from participant's comments or by patterns in the data she found. She would do the in-class writing exercises and join the discussions on the drafts. So, she would take notes and create questions. Each thinking aloud protocol lasted 30-minutes and followed by 30-minute retrospective interviews in which Dave was asked to tell about the process that McCarthy had done. First draft of a paper late in the semester. McCarthy documented what she called writing conscious concerns. These concerns were identified as anything the writer paid attention to during composing as expressed by: Remarks about a thought or behavior or Observed behaviors When she was textually analyzing the complete papers, McCarthy used Grice's four conditions of successful conversation:' Pg. 242 Quality: is it adequate? Do they believe what they are saying? Quantity: long enough? Relation: does it make sense? Manner: are you responding appropriately? She did this off the written responses that each professor would give to McCarthy on Dave's papers. Then tallied the comments corresponding to one or more of the four conditions. The information that McCarthy gathered supported three conclusions, two concerning Dave's interpretation and production of the required writing tasks and one concerning social factors: He interpreted the writing tasks, although similar, to be completely different from each other and anything he had ever done before. Social factors affecting his performance: the functions that writing served for Dave in each setting and the roles that participants and students' texts played hereHe found it very helpful in his Comp. course to have peer editing. He'd never done it before. Dave constantly figured out an appropriate writing scheme for each context. Generic v. Specific Expertise

Case study of a student in a rhetoric Ph.D. program

"Conventions, Conversations, and the Writer: Case Study of a Student in a Rhetoric Ph.D. Program," aimed to learn about the difficulties of a skilled novice writer during his first year in a Ph.D. rhetoric program. Researchers focused on the writer's, Nate's texts that he was required to submit for his "The Process of Research" course at Carnegie Mellon University. Nate was also asked to write weekly self-reports of his experiences in the program and met with the research to discuss these reports. During the initial phase of the study, analysis showed that the most problematic text-features of Nate's early writings in the rhetoric program were, "(a) excessive use of the first-person singular pronoun, (b) insufficient cohesion and coherence, and (c) inappropriate diction (pg. 15)." Researchers described Nate's writing style as an 'informal repertoire' that he needed to transition into a "formal register appropriate to academic discourse within a disciplinary community (18)." To acquire this 'textual competence', Nate needed to gain both declarative, information one knows, and procedural knowledge, how to apply this information (19). His desire to be accepted in this academic community of rhetorical researchers, he was urged and willingly adopted the writing style of the researchers that he was studying and aspiring to be like. The researchers found that Nate's average sentence length, number of connectives, discourse demonstratives, I's, article ratio and register index, differed greatly from the works of the established researchers he studied in his Ph.D. program. However, towards the end of the year long program, researchers found that Nate adopted the practices of his counterparts, allowing him to be closer to gaining acceptance into the academic community he wishes to be a part of. The study highlighted the necessities and norms of a specific group one must accept to gain respect and acceptance into said group. As we continue our education we learn how to become 'experts' in the highest level of one community before becoming novices in the next professional community. I found this to be interesting, but also unnerving as not everyone within a community has the same goals as the majority. It is interesting that regardless of one's end goal or passions, to some respect you have to respect the 'rules' of the community you are currently in, if you wish to move on to the next one.

Haas "Learning to Read Biology"

The study conducted here is one designed to analyze a student's rhetorical development over the course of their four year college career, with the unique factor here being keeping track of one particular person over a long period of time. Rather than having to look at individual moments in time and make estimates about where their progress will move, this longitudinal study allows us to actually track how our participants reading and writing ability develops in a practical manner. Something that particularly jumped out to me in my reading was that by the end of the participants time in school, the role of student almost seems to be holding her back more than helping her. When she is on her own in the lab, making things happen by herself and utilizing what she's learned, this is where her rhetorical ability is at it's strongest. In this environment she seemed to really recognize herself as part of a greater community, and furthermore, a contributing member of that community. She understands the give and take of scientific consensus, and comes to her own conclusions about studies that she reads. However, in the classroom setting, she seems to revert back to her freshmen tendencies a bit, and I think this can largely be attributed to her belief that her professors were interested in nothing but straightforward fact. The classroom setting is holding her back here, and her rhetorical ability is stronger when shes doing work of her own.

Blakeslee - "Activity, Context, Interaction, and Authority: Learning to Write Scientific Papers In Situ'

The study, "Activity, Context, Interaction, and Authority: Learning to Write Scientific Papers In Situ" by Ann Blakeslee looked at how students in advanced academic and professional settings acquire disciplinary skills for reading and writing. The study focused on the field of physics with a graduate student who was working alongside their mentor/advisor to produce a research article meant to be published in scholarly journal. This was a case of situated learning, where the student is placed in the position of greater authority for producing and contributing to their respective fields. The goal was for the student to use their prior knowledge and extend themselves to meet the standards of an expert while being guided by an expert mentor. Within the year (Jan 1991- Jan 1992), the methods Blakeslee used included: Observing and recording meetings between the advisor and grad student as they revised drafts which took place once to twice a week and lasted approximately 2 hours Recorded informal and formal interviews with the advisor and graduate student individually lasting an hour Examining all (22) versions of drafts Blakeslee's findings reveal that there were three main factors that are key to the success of situated learning: The comfort with existing skills from the graduate student - As he did not have experience with writing journal articles, he went to his comfort zone and would write as he would for technical process reports. The student was close-minded to recognize the difference in genre, audience, and purpose of a research article, counterproductive to the feedback he was receiving from his advisor. Support of advisor - The advisor purposely would provide indirect, implicit and vague feedback to his student so that the student would "catch on", modeled after his graduate student experience. However, the student didn't respond as the advisor intended and would ignore the feedback that they didn't understand. There was a great focus on organization, format and quantity of technical descriptions from the grad student, but the advisor cared for audience perception and overall message, argument and purpose of article. Distribution of power in relationship - The advisor had superior authority as mentor but Blakeslee observed it caused issues for learning and intimidation to share from the graduate student. As the distant form of feedback was unproductive towards the student and assignment, the advisor had drop his persona to give exact changes and notes but felt it was wrong to baby him. Blakeslee's final suggestions to improve situated learning experiences in the future are (158): Provide greater support and direction to help students undertake and preform new tasks Identify and work more with students' existing knowledge and strategies Make more explicit aims and goals of the situated learning process Give students greater autonomy, authority, and say in carrying out tasks Provide other, perhaps earlier, opportunities for students to gain exposure to, and experience with, tasks Reflect more critically on the location and distribution of authority in mentor-student relationships Reply Quote Email Author

Beaufort "Developmental Gains of a History Major: A Case for Building a Theory of Disciplinary Writing Expertise"

literacy and composition studies, efforts to develop data-driven theories of disciplinary writing expertise and of writers' developmental processes in joining specific discourse communities have so far been limited. This case study, of one writer's experiences as an undergraduate history major, parses the multiple knowledge domains comprising disciplinary writing expertise and compares his beginning and later work for signs of developmental progress. A conceptual model of five knowledge domains writers must draw upon--discourse-community knowledge, subject-matter knowledge, genre knowledge, rhetorical knowledge, and writing-process knowledge--is applied to the data both for analysis of the case and for exploring the usefulness of the conceptual model for further empirical and theoretical work. What results is a fuller depiction of the complexities of gaining expertise in any given discourse community, as well as an indication of the importance of educators across all disciplines considering the multi-dimensional and developmental nature of their curricula for building literacy skills.