Skilled Writers Research Articles

Working with Advanced Writers

and passive style that virtually excludes people from their writing. In their prose, decisions are made and opportunities exist for development of business. Paula Johnson, director of writing program at Yale for several years, found that freshmen writers at Yale excelled at this impersonal style, 1 and research of Andrea Lunsford, director of writing at University of British Columbia, confirms Johnson's observations. In analyzing writing samples of entering freshmen, Lunsford found that writers whom essay evaluators classified as skilled used many more abstract words and nominalizations than did unskilled writers; they also used far fewer personal pronouns. 2 Fourth, advanced students' writing is often unrealistically ambitious. They are apt to tackle topics that are much too broad, giving their papers titles like American Sense of Humor, and Problem of Cheating in College, and beginning their papers with statements of commitment that they could not fulfill in less than 25 or 30 pages. They seem unaware of responsibilities such topics impose on them. Graduate students are a little more realistic, but they too are likely to overestimate greatly how much they can handle responsibly in a short paper. Fifth, papers of advanced writers tend to be long on generalizations and short on specifics. So, of course, do those of beginning writers, but advanced writers seem even more prone to expect to pass smoothly phrased and correctly written generalizations off as genuine discourse. Lunsford's study supports this observation. She noted that a major difference between content of essays of basic writers and those of skilled writers was that basic writers tended to draw on concrete personal experience when writing about topics such as advertising, but skilled writers expressed their ideas mostly in generalities and high level abstractions. Paula Johnson noted same pattern. Sixth, even advanced college writers seem to have almost no sense of audience when they write. Most of their papers are written solely for teacher in role of judge and examiner, or they are what I call blue sky papers, written to some unidentified and faceless person. Even these advanced writers never seem to have considered what preconceptions their readers might bring to a text or what readers might expect of them as a writer. But this is not surprising since most of these advanced students tell me that they have never before had a composition teacher who even mentioned audience, much less stressed it as an important component of writing situation. Even my graduate students have had almost no experience in analysis of audience. The final product of these advanced writers, then, is apt to be wordy, dull, sometimes superficial, but mechanically correct writing. They display what Paula Johnson calls a flat competence; what they do not have is what Wayne Booth calls the rhetorical stance.'3 That is, they reveal no sense of audience for their writing, they show no sense of purpose except to fill a requirement, This content downloaded from 157.55.39.181 on Thu, 29 Sep 2016 05:18:20 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Working with Advanced Writers 199 and they have no persona or voice. Their writing reveals nothing of themselves. To me, this lack of what Donald Stewart and others have called the authentic voice emerges as chief problem of most advanced writers. Almost all of their other problems-wordiness, impersonal style, excessive generalities, fuzzy diction, bland verbs and ponderous nominalizations, and a fondness for conventional wisdom-stem from this central problem. Because these students have no sense of audience other than their teachers, and because they are often wary and distrustful of that audience, they are reluctant to let their real personalities show through their writing. As a result, when they write they often use language not as a means for communicating about something that genuinely interests them, but as a barrier. They create masks to keep from exposing vulnerable real self. Sometimes mask is that of stodgy bureaucrat, spouting jargon and convoluted sentences; sometimes it is that of cheerleader, dazzling reader with flashy trivia and words like fantastic and incredible; sometimes students take on role of pedantic scholar, using big words to impress and intimidate; and sometimes they assume guise of good and earnest citizen expressing virtuous senti-

Writing Processes, Revision, and Rhetorical Problems: A Note on Three Recent Articles

first three articles in December, 1981, issue of College Composition and Communication--Flower and Hayes' A Cognitive Process Theory of Writing, Berkenkotter's Understanding a Writer's Awareness of Audience, and Witte and Faigley's Analyzing Revision--demonstrate that current research and theory on composition is insisting that rhetorical concerns of and purpose are integral to processes of writing, however complex we discover that those processes are. Revision, these articles affirm, is a complex activity within which rhetorical emphases are central. processes of writing are sufficiently complex, and sufficiently variable from writer to writer, that they cannot be reduced to a pat formula but demand models of great breadth and flexibility, but these processes have in common writers' attention to whether their words will achieve with readers specific goals writers seek. Berkenkotter's study of audience-awareness reveals that skilled writers automatically internalize their audiences and then use this sensed audience and their relationship to it to help them modify assigned writing tasks, select appropriate types of discourse, and make a wide range of rhetorical, organizational, and stylistic decisions while they write. But centrality of rhetorical concerns to process also is evident in importance, for revision, that Faigley and Witte give to such situational variables for composing as the reason why text is being written . . , writer's familiarity with writing task, writer's familiarity with subject, writer's familiarity with audience. And Flower and Hayes, as they describe writing processes as a whole, show that one significant dimension of task environment is the rhetorical problem, a factor which not only rhetorical situation and audience which prompt one to write, [but] also includes writer's own goals in writing. That defining and addressing a rhetorical problem is an essential step in processes of writing is not a new idea-a fact that is clear in Flower and Hayes' earlier work, for instance The Cognition of Discovery (CCC, Feb-

Recommended Reading

How do you communicate clearly to a reader without boring him? How do you prod his imagination without confusing him? The answer, I suppose, is to be a highly skilled writer and work very hard at your craft. But while there may be no simple and absolute rules for effective communication, there is an art called rhetoric that can help. I offer the following brief passage from Aristotle's words about rhetoric in the hope that some who are unfamiliar with that ancient art may be moved to read further. A good starting point would be Readings in Classical Rhetoric, edited by Thomas W. Benson and Michael H. Prosser (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969). As you read, bear in mind that this is a translation from a Greek text thought by scholars to be lecture notes – perhaps those of Aristotle himself, perhaps those of one of his students. Consider whether notes from any lectures you have given or attended are likely to look this insightful and clear 2300 years hence. Then notice Aristotle's very subtle understanding of how verbal style can shape an audience's awareness of what is being communicated.

Dismantling the Tower of Babel in Computer Documentation

Whether to hire technical graduates or liberal arts graduates to train as technical writers has always been a problem in the computer industry. The technical graduate takes much longer to train as a writer, but he learns the technical subject much more quickly. The more complex the subject, the more likely the technical graduate is to be selected — and the longer it takes for him to become a skilled writer. How the problem was partially solved at NCR by the use of a restricted vocabulary is explained. An unsolved part of the problem is identified, and readers are urged to help find the solution.

Teachers of Composition and Needed Research in Discourse Theory

our classes? Underlying these questions is at least one major assumption: our primary obligation is to have some influence on the way students compose, to make a difference in students' ability to use written language to give order and meaning to their experience. As though this obligation were not demanding enough, I want to argue that we have at least one other responsibility. We must not only influence our students' writing, but also help refine and shape the discourse theory that will guide our work with students. In addition to being teachers, we should also function as discourse theorists and researchers. As we try to fulfill this new obligation, we will need to ask new kinds of questions. Is a given theory valid? Does it do justice to the complexities (and the simplicities) of the writing we see every day? Are the theory's assumptions borne out in writing done by our students? It's tempting to avoid this sort of question by assuming that the work of highly skilled writers presents the most interesting test and the most dramatic illustration of discourse theory. And, of course, it would be foolish to overlook what such writers can help us discover about the composing process and the natur of effective writing. Yet if discourse theo y is to make comprehensive descrip iv statements about writing, theorists will have to test their assumptions against the actual performance of writ rs of quit diverse abilities. In our classrooms, we have unique access to this diversity. The writing of our students represents a kind of information that is alm st impossible to obtain in any context other than a course that is pri arily concerned with students' writing. In the remainder of this article, I shall suggest ways we might use this source of information to examine and re-

From Hopalong to Hud: Thoughts on Western Fiction by C. L. Sonnichsen

Reviews 259 begin; and begin with hard work, and patience, prepared for all the dis­ appointments that were Martin Eden’s before he succeeded — which were mine before I succeeded. . . . ” London often drew heavily upon his own experiences for his work, and there are excerpts from Martin Eden and John Barleycorn, two auto­ biographical works in which he wrote candidly and passionately about the frustrations, heartbreaks, and rewards of writing for a livelihood. If you haven’t read them, Walker’s selections from the books are enough to make you hasten a trip to the local library. The collection also contains a broad and perceptive foreword by How­ ard Lachtman, who has three books in the making on London. Dr. Lachtman shows the unfamiliar side of the Jack London persona; he strips away much of the myth surrounding the man and offers a candid look at a writer who has all too often been dismissed or overlooked by critics of American literature. Interest in London has increased markedly since the publication of a volume of letters in 1965, and Dale Walker’s jewel of an anthology is a welcome addition to a steady stream of serious works on London that have appeared since that time. The reading public is finally beginning to realize that London was much more than a skillful writer of yams about howling wolf-dogs in the frozen wilderness of the Klondike and nautical adventures on the open seas. SAL NOTO, Cupertino, California From Hopalong to Hud: Thoughts on Western Fiction. By C. L. Sonnichsen . (College Station and London: Texas A & M University Press, 1978. 201 pages, $9.95.) From Hopalong to Hud: Thoughts on Western Fiction is a gathering of eleven essays by C. L. Sonnichsen. Almost all of the pieces have been published previously, one as long ago as 1943; most were written in the late 1960s and in the 1970s (two appeared originally in WAL). Sonnich­ sen, who was the first president of the Western Literature Association and currently is editor of the Journal of Arizona History, easily ranks as one of our most distinguished interpreters of Western culture. Not surprisingly, then, his collected “thoughts” on the Western novel turn out to be well worth pondering. The breadth of Sonnichsen’s reading in Western fiction is astonishing. Have you ever read George Gilman’s Valley of Blood or Robert J. Seid- 260 Western American Literature man’s One Smart Indian or John Reese’s Sure Shot Shapiro? Sonnichsen has. These and hundreds of other well-known and little-known books are marshalled as supporting evidence for the author’s thesis — a thesis that sews together the otherwise disparate essay into a handsomely stitched gar­ ment. Briefly, Sonnichsen’s contention is that Western novels “are mirrors which faithfully reflect our assumptions and prejudices.” The “social his­ torian,” he continues, reads these works “not for what they tell him about the subject matter, but for what they tell him about the reader.” Sonnich­ sen’s approach is provocative and, more importantly, productive. He clearly demonstrates, for instance, how Western fiction works as a barometer of evolving popular attitudes toward Indians and Mexican-Americans; he also shows how it mirrors the American reading audience’s insatiable appe­ tite for ever more exotic forms of violence and ever larger doses of explicit sex. The preponderance of the books Sonnichsen employs as evidence scarcely registers on the literary Richter scale. These works are mostly, as the author says, “horse operas, shoot-em-ups, hayburners . . . oaters.” Such formula fiction, however, is especially useful in abstracting popular beliefs since it is aimed at readers interested in entertainment — that is, readers who prefer not to have their settled convictions disturbed. If Sonnichsen is a witty and reliable guide through the dimly lit cellar of the subliterary, he is, unfortunately, not so helpful in making us (even within the strict limitations imposed by his thesis) understand the significance of more “serious” Western novelists. His perspective on the likes of Larry McMurtry, Edward Abbey, and William Eastlake seems to be hampered by too narrow a focus on one topic — sex. The author’s remarks on these writers — and on some lesser lights, whom he calls...

Social Realism in the Dialogue of Eighteenth-Century French Fiction

Social Realism in the Dialogue oj Eighteenth-Century French Fiction VI VIENNE MYLNE One element of French novels which shows a marked change during the eighteenth century is that of dialogue. The simplest and most obvious way of describing the change is to say that, in a significant number of novels, dialogue becomes more “realistic” in manner and presentation: the style of conversations in a work by Balzac is more like the way people talk in real life than is, say, the dialogue style of La Princesse de Cleves. However, once we try to go beyond simplistic statements of this kind, the criterion of “realism” becomes less satisfactory. There are problems in ap­ plying the criterion (some of which involve conflicts between different types of “realism”); and in any case, “realism” alone cannot serve as a criterion of literary excellence. In this essay we shall consider the theoretical problems as they arise in the course of discussing our examples, while the question of the evaluation of literary merit will be left until the end. In order to keep the discussion within manageable limits, I shall concentrate here on the kinds of realism which can be most easily identified. These are the cases where a novelist indicates—by grammar, vocabulary and even spelling—that the character in 265 266 / VIVIENNE MYLNE question does not use the language of well-educated Parisians. Such divergences from standard French thus carry implicit infor­ mation about the character’s social class, level of education, and place of origin. Before considering eighteenth-century developments, however, we need to look briefly at some of the conventions concerning dialogue which were in force toward the end of the seventeenth century. There are two main points which should be mentioned here. The first is merely one aspect of the more general question of levels of style: the concept of literary genres, and of maintain­ ing a style consonant with each genre or type of work. This “rule” was followed in fiction as well as in drama and poetry, and it covered not only passages where the voice is that of the narrator, but dialogue too. Thus, in France, it was only in comic fiction, and more especially in burlesque novels or anti-romans, that one found common characters talking in a low style. Far more frequent were novels in which the protagonists were noble and the dialogue was presented in correct and fairly formal language. Commenting on the style of such works, Henri Coulet says: Sa politesse amortit toute violence, toute erudite, son absence d’elan est propre a insinuer la tristesse; les conversations sont tres souvent rapportees au style indirect, dans le meme but d’attenuation , et quand elles sont transcrites au style direct, toujours tres eloignees de la phraseologie baroque, elles ne sont pas moins eloignees du dialogue familier.1 This regular correlation between certain identifiable kinds of fiction and their corresponding stylistic registers is one that begins to break down in the eighteenth century; and dialogue, as we shall see, is one of the elements which contributes to the breakdown. Coulet’s remark about the frequency of reported speech brings me to my second point concerning conventions. In this case we are dealing with a specific device or technique. Besides using indirect speech liberally, seventeenth-century writers also had frequent recourse to what one might call narrated speech, which presents the gist of what was said—sometimes fully, sometimes in a Social Realism in the Dialogue ofFrench Fiction I 267 compressed form—but without supplying the actual words of the speaker. Narrated speech is often combined with reported speech, and this mode of presentation continued throughout the eight­ eenth century. In the hands of a skillful writer the technique can be quite lively and effective. The following passage, by Louvet de Couvray, relates a scene in which the Count is teasing the Marquise, in her husband’s presence, about her guilty secret (“Mile Duportail” is in reality young Faublas himself, disguised as a girl): Preludant avec la Marquise par de legeres epigrammes, il protestoit qu’elle seule, jusqu’a present, savoit precisement combien Mademoiselle Duportail meritoit d’etre aimee. La Mar­ quise, egalement adroite et prompte...

Oskar Maria Graf: ein Überblick über sein literarisches Werk

The German writer Oskar Maria Graf, exiled in 1933, published many books abroad which only recently have started to appear in the German press. At his death in New York City in 1967 he left behind a number of hitherto unpublished manuscripts, which include poems, short stories, essays, speeches, travelogs, aphorisms, and fragments of narrative fiction. This discussion is chiefly concerned with Graf 's most significant publications and with the most promising of his unpublished manuscripts; it tries to show him, not — as some critics believed — as a one-sided political writer, nor — as others thought — as a mere writer of regional literature, but as a skilled writer who combined a keen insight into the human soul with an understanding of the major problems facing the modern world.

Up From Little Egypt

Percival Bailey is a distinguished investigator of the nervous system— in surgery, pathology, anatomy, physiology, psychiatry. In addition, he is one of the most colorful figures in American medicine. And in addition, he is an accomplished and skillful writer. We see all three of these facets in a new volume that brings together a series of autobiographical essays that Bailey had presented before the Chicago Literary Club. Like a probing searchlight, the essays brilliantly illuminate some aspects but leave others in obscurity. The book is a succession of vignettes, each of which presents sharply etched details, and in the aggregate they provide a broad autobiographical survey. Prefacing the essays is a short biographical sketch of the more conventional sort, written by Ruth Anderson Tooze, and there is a short foreword by Paul C. Bucy. Bailey was born in downstate southern Illinois, in 1892. Although raised in poverty, he was determined

A Comparison of Listening and Reading as a Means of Testing

The subjective type of examination, other things being equal, tends to favor the skillful writer, the objective type the effective reader, and the oral type the fluent talker. But what about the good listener? Why not an examina tion which favors him? That is the emphasis of the present proposal. Specifically^ the sug gestion is for an objective listening-type ex amination with true-false, multiple-c h o i c e, or simple one-word recall items. Instead of being presented visually in a reading situa tion, as is the usual practice, the items would be presented in a listening situation. (1).

On N'Achete Pas les Enfants dans les Drug Stores

WHAT has been the effect of the impact of American English on modern French? In view of the many contacts between Americans and Frenchmen in recent years, it would be surprising indeed if evidence of American influence were not discernible. A convenient opportunity to arrive at some notion of that influence is afforded in a novel of the Second World War, Emigres de luxe, by Maurice Dekobra, published by Brentano in 1941. Since the action of most of the novel takes place in and around New York, and since most of the characters are American, the author uses a great many English words and a great many Americanisms. His only restraint in this regard, we may assume, would be his sense of the ability of his French readers to understand these outlandish terms. Because Dekobra is a skillful writer, with many successful novels behind him, may we not also assume that his judgment as to what Americanisms his readers would understand can be trusted? A justifiable conclusion, then, would be that the English words and the Americanisms used by Dekobra have, to some degree at least, become a part of the French language. Emigris de luxe is the story of an Austrian movie actress who escapes from the concentration camp where she has been interned by the Germans and appeals for shelter at the chateau of the Duc de Brancourt. The much-married duke himself takes an interest in her, hides her from the German agents, marries her, and after the fall of the Third Republic, brings her to America. The S.S. Toledo, with its 225 refugees, docks in New York on page 61 of this 404-page novel, and after that, the action is wholly in New York and at Ivy Lodge, the palatial mansion near Tarrytown, New York, where live the two unmarried sisters of the duke's first wife, together with June, eighteen-year-old daughter of the duke by this earlier marriage. Lest the reader unfamiliar with Dekobra conclude that this is another 'sentimental novel for chambermaids,' I hasten to add that it is highly sophisticated and even gay as the French know how to be gay in the midst of a good deal of misery. His revenues cut off as a result of the German invasion of France, the duke is faced with the problem of earning a living in the New World, a problem which he solves with no great expenditure of blood, sweat, and tears by becoming first a master of ceremonies in a night club and later a popular lecturer before women's clubs, on the subject of how to use that charm, or, according to the billing: 'Your Heart Is My

A Visit with Vance Randolph

On 19 June 1953, spoke on Negro storytelling to the Arkansas Folklore Society on the campus of the University of Arkansas, at Fayetteville. Apart from my natural interest in meeting this active and enthusiastic group, looked forward keenly to making the acquaintance of Vance Randolph. But Randolph was not at Fayetteville; ill health prevented his traveling the relatively short distance from his home at Eureka Springs. After the two-day Arkansas Folk Festival, drove to Eureka Springs, a scenic resort town balanced precariously among the Ozark hills, and called on him. Tall, well-built, ruggedly good-looking, Randolph scarcely seemed the invalid, but heart trouble confined him closely to home, and permitted him only a couple of fresh working hours in the morning. At present he is working on a bibliography of Ozark folklore in print, since he cannot collect. All my work is with the Ozark country and people, he explains; I don't attempt to do anything with outside folklore. I've lived and collected here most of my life, but could have collected a lot more, if could have gotten any help. Just a dollar a day would have kept me going, in the Ozarks. But the foundations turned me down twenty-eight years in a row. Mencken, Frank Dobie, Louise Pound, wrote letters for me, but didn't have a Ph.D. [Randolph has a Master's degree in psychology from Clark University.] So I've had to make what money could writing. What the magazines won't take, send to the folklore journals. Now there's a funny thing; the folklore journals get what the paying magazines reject. once told my friend Ernest Otto Rayburn [author of Ozark Folkways, and present president of the Arkansas Folklore Society] to write an article for the JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE. He's written a great deal about Ozark folklore, in different newspapers and magazines, that the folklorists never see. Well, he asked me how much they paid, and when told him nothing, he took the paper out of his typewriter and tossed it in the wastebasket. Everyone met in northern Arkansas who knew Randolph-folksingers, fellow collectors, faculty people-spoke of him with great regard. One soon understands why, after meeting him, and left this perceptive and dedicated collector and skillful writer with a sad heart, thinking that he had never been able to afford a recording machine, and that a life of honorable achievement had left him with illness, worry, and the constant problem of paying rent and food bills. The outstanding collector of our time, who perhaps alone knows how to avoid commercial shoddiness and scholarly dullness, without sacrificing readability or integrity, deserves the best tribute American folklorists can tender.