Writer-Audience Relationships: Analysis or Invention?

Abstract

As my freshman composition classes begin each fall, I find that I am faced with two major problems: the first is the deeply embedded freshman concept that successful writing is the same as successful proofreading; the second is that the written word-especially the printed word-is seen as a fixed and passive artifact. In practice these two beliefs combine to produce a mindset that turns the writing process into a search, usually unsuccessful, for the sentence, paragraph, or essay. These students have heard English teachers pay lip service to the possibility of alternatives in writing, to the writer's control of his material, to the latitude open to a writer, but they know full well this is lip service only: if you choose the subject and say the things about it you get an A; otherwise (i.e. usually) you don't guess right and you get a C, or worse, as well as a collection of red grunts such as Awk, Coh, or Agr. This, of course, tends to prove the proofreading thesis. Like all composition teachers, I struggle to counter these beliefs, but I struggle selectively. That is, I do feel that proofreading is important, but that it must post-date, not antedate other skills, and I can usually convince my students of the validity of my position. On the second point, however, I usually have more difficulty. I do not feel that writing is passive, either as process or product; I feel strongly that the reader plays an active role, and that the writer, when writing, must be consciously aware of the reader's activity. Quite obviously, I am not alone in this conviction, for most texts designed for use in beginning composition classes do pay some attention to the writer's awareness of his reader. However, as I have tried in my classes to use the advice provided in such works, I have become increasingly disturbed not only about the superficiality of the advice itself, but about the philosophy which seems to lie beneath it. It seems to me that there are several wrong notes being sounded, but that there are some potential correctives available. Acknowledged or not, most composition texts rely heavily upon classical rhetorical concepts. While this reliance has had several results-most obvi-