Bergmann and Zepernick

Discussion Post

Joshua C. Cook English 1001 (006)

I thought this article shared a lot of views that I already had in connection to what the students thought. I believe I failed to see what the authors where trying to prove after reading this paper. I side with the students on this paper in agreement that math, physics and subjects like that have more authority and “Hard Facts”. Where English is more subjective and has a lot of “rules” that seem arbitrary and useless. The article also stated that the purpose of English was to teach student rhetorical theory and problem solving skills, and that students where failing to learn that from English because they didn’t respect it a an actual athority. The article also demonstrated that the students already had these skills, with students finding the needs of their audiences (there teacher) and I quote “all of the participants in our study seemed to have internalized a strong sense of the real rhetorical situation of the classroom”. This article also demonstrates that the skills that students do transfer from their classes are rudimentary and are the skills that overlap with most professions.

The idea of novices and experts isn’t that ground breaking, all trades, disciplines, and occupations have them. The novices in the case of English just don’t know where they stand because of the way they perceive English or how it is presented to them. In most trades the lack of knowledge is apparent to the novice and may carry serious consequences so the expert is taken seriously. For example in machining when you mess-up there is a chance of serious bodily harm or death, while in English if you don’t use a coma nothing of note happens. This might be the reason that most people don’t take English as seriously as it should be, or English is put on a pedestal and everyone is taking everything too seriously.

Here is a passage that I find could be of use in my MA4 “As a group, the participants in our study prided themselves on their ability to figure out what teachers want, on both personal and disciplinary levels, and then do it. Students who had had jobs or internships that involved writing spoke in similar terms about understanding and address-ing the workplace audience”. I would use this passage to show that the skills that are needed in life my already be acquired by most people and the English has taught these skill even if it was unintentional or indirectly. I could use some of the papers that needed more work and compare them to the ones that were accepted to show how the writing change to suit the reader and assignment. there will be some work that will have to be done with the passage to show what I mean when using it, for when you read the passage on its own you might just get the idea that students are sneaky and will just conform to get what they want.