Addressing Genre in the Writing Center

Abstract

In an Internet posting a few years ago, a former writing teacher, having abandoned the academic life in order to raise Arabian horses, observed that the process of teaching college writing was similar in many ways to the enterprise of "dressage," a term that refers to the guiding of a horse through a series of complex maneuvers by slight movements of the hands, legs, and weight.In particular, he noted the following:1 .Get the horse to understand what it is supposed to do.This is the hardest part, since the horse has no idea what, how, or why it should do it.It is also the most critical, since the easiest way to do it -force the horse into something through discipline or fear or a device that it reacts negatively to -is also the very thing that ruins the horse for advanced dressage, where cooperation and initiative and enthusiasm from the horse is required.2. Practice the new movement as often and in as many different situations as possible.3. Insist that the horse perform the learned movement properly, without undue punishment and with great patience and praise.For writing center professionals, whose work often focuses on fostering student understanding of the nature, purpose and features of college level writing and on helping students apply what they have learned in variety of academic contexts, the parallels are obvious -that is:1 .Help students understand how the goals of academic writing are achieved through a text.Simply teaching a set of arbitrary rules will not enable students to apply what they have learned to new situations that involve writing.

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