Culture and Process in the Classroom

This is a post that has more questions than answers- questions raised from our Thursday discussion with the Chinese educators. What does the structure of our freshman writing curriculum communicate about our cultural values? The Chinese writing classroom centers around learning to write and communicate well through a contextual understanding of the culture whose language they write in. I think that this principle is missing in many ways from our freshman classes. We want them to write professionally without properly initiating them into the world of professional communication. We deduct points for cliche phrases and informal writing by simply saying that its not professional. This may not get them any closer to understanding what exactly professional language is and why they need to develop this type of writing as a separate language set. Would it be helpful to explain to them the culture of professional writing? We try to teach them the large concept of audience, but when we are their audience, how do we make this a concept that extends outside of the classroom and into the larger world of writing they will encounter?  

Our curriculum also values technology. Online interface replaces some of the face time with the teacher in the classroom. I was interested in the fact that the Chinese composition classes meet four days of the week. Which brings me to another question- what does our format communicate about writing as a process? Several of our assignments represent writing as process, but does the classroom format undermine this value? It seems that more frequent meetings communicate learning as a community process that involves the teacher and the students cooperatively. In terms of developing a post-process way of looking at composition, it seems that more time in the classroom would foster the opportunity to approach the process of writing from multiple directions. In our program, the idea of process becomes an individual student burden. Ultimately the responsibility falls on the student, but does the online mechanization of process favor some students over others? Could the same written product be constructed through other approaches? Ultimately no matter how much we try to include process and post-process writing approaches, we are looking for a specific product. I think we need to more carefully define what this product is for students and help them to understand the academic culture that requires this specific product.