Conference on College Composition and Communication
Annual Convention
New York, 19-22 March 2003
What can cross-cultural research tell us about student writing? Perspectives and questions from a study of writing about Literature in Europe.
In this presentation I ask what we can learn about composition by comparing practices in different cultures of writing. With reference to a study of genres of student writing about Literature I describe how an understanding of the cultural shaping of texts in different systems has helped me to see how students write from both personal and cultural positions. I argue that more comparative awareness of writing across cultures can help us to gain better understanding of student transitions – between systems, cultures or phases of education – and what it means to learn to write in new conditions.
A meaning only reveals its depths once it has encountered and come into contact with another, foreign meaning: they engage in a kind of dialogue which surmounts the closed-ness and one-sidedness of these particular meanings,these cultures. Without one’s own questions one cannot creatively understand anything other or foreign. Such a dialogic encounter of two cultures does not result inmerging or mixing. Each retains its own unity and opentotality, but they are mutually enriched.
Mikhail Bakhtin, ‘Response to a Question
From Novy Mir’
Writing about Literature: The Netherlands
· student makes a ‘leesdossier’ – a personal ‘reading portfolio’ based on their own reading choices in response to a given theme. The student’s own experience of reading is a central factor in literature study. Assessment relates to this ‘dossier’
· Literature is only one of six ‘domains’ in the assessment of Dutch – others include ‘writing’, ‘reading’, ‘argument’
· range of genres may include a ‘leesautobiografie’ or various imaginative responses alongside critical essays. This represents a major change in genre repertoire compared to previous system.
· curricular change (2001) designed to promote more individual engagement with Literature and less reliance on the genre of the book report (‘boekverslag’) and potted cultural histories
· assessment is decentralised and is both written and oral.This does mean wide regional variation in how the ‘leesdossier’ is organised. In some cases the ‘dossier’ works in combination with traditional exams.
· opportunities exist for integrating study of Dutch literature with study of English, French, German Literature, and some schools have developed ‘World Literature’ courses
· Literature education in the Netherlands has taken a more pluralist view of its subject and its aims, and the genres of student writing have broadened.
Writing about Literature: France Baccalauréat
· student prepares three written forms for examination on a ‘corpus’ of texts, prescribed nationally, which may include visual as well as literary texts:
Ø sujet de commentaire
Ø sujet de dissertation
Ø sujet d’invention
· ’l’écriture d’invention’ was introduced in 2001 to strengthen links between reading and writing and to provide alternatives to
expository and discursive writing. Formerly four essayist genres
of writing characterised Bac. composition
· inventive forms are specified and taught as formally structured genres: article, monologue, different types of letter, the ‘plaidoyer’ etc. as modelled ‘travails d’écriture’
· ‘l’écriture d’invention’ must show a ‘liaison’ with the corpus and often involves ‘re-écriture’ – the ‘re-writing’ of a text in another form or style
· all three forms value ‘personal response’, but through highly structured and practised genres
· literary writing remains the mainstay of assessment in French Bac. Repertoire of genres has become broader and more open to personal choices.
Writing about Literature: International Baccalaureate
· Student does four types of assignment about prescribed world literature:
Ø Written essay for examination and coursework
Ø Oral commentary
Ø Written commentary
Ø Classroom presentation
· The combination of oral and written assessment is a recent
development in the IB programme and has been introduced
to explore alternative genres of literary enquiry to formal
essay-writing and commentary.
· In individual classroom presentations students are encouraged to
use role play forms: ‘a monologue by a character at an important point in the text’
or imitations of a writer’s style, with a rationale for what they
have done. They are also free to use interactive forms such as interviews or
debates to show response to a literary work. Dialogic and
dramatic genres are also used.
· The oral commentary asks students to read and discuss a poem or
extract from a novel or play and offer a detailed analysis in a
recorded interview with the teacher
· Texts are, largely, prescribed by the exam board, and are designed to give students an experience of world literature.
· IB programme can be studied in many languages.
Conclusions: Student Writing about Literature
· Curriculum and assessment shape the writing practices of students in learning to write about Literature.
· Particular genre repertoires and assignments produce understandings about ‘doing writing’ in relation to literary texts. In moving to new contexts such as university, student writing may continue to show traces of these situated understandings
· Literary education is not static, but changing and contested, and student writing is implicated in change
· Tensions emerge between ‘portfolio’ and ‘essayist’ writing in attempts to engage students in modern literary study. There are trends towards more ‘multi-genre’ participation and personal writing alongside formal analysis
· Tensions emerge between canonical and newly emerging forms as more diverse connections between reading and writing are sought
· Tensions persist between ‘Literature’ as a single, received, national canon, and ‘Literature’ as multiple, contested, inter-national cultural phenomena
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