In his essay, “First Year Composition Prepares Students for Academic Writing,” Tyler Branson makes the argument that FYC Courses like this one should be seen not as corrective classes intended to provide remedial instruction on grammar. Instead, students should see FYC courses as opportunities to develop the strategies and skills necessary for civic discourse. He argues that viewing FYC as only teaching research and essay writing skills is too limited a view. FYC courses, Branson claims, do more than prepare students to write in college. Courses like EGL 1010 prepare students to engage in productive arguments beyond the college classroom.
To begin to understand Branson’s argument, we first need to see writing as something more than a task students are forced to do. Instead, we need to understand writing–even academic writing–as a technology for communicating ideas.
Writing as Communication
Many students write essays because they are required to pass a class. Students write because their teacher has assigned a topic and because they want to pass a class. Often, students will use the format of the Five-Paragraph essay not because it’s the best way to make their argument, but because the teacher said that it’s the correct–maybe even the only way–to write an essay. The student may or may not care about what they are writing or whether their writing made any kind of impact on the reader.
But this isn’t usually how communication works.
Normally, people don’t write or communicate without a reason. Usually, people choose to communicate because they are responding to some specific situation.
The Five-Paragraph essay or any single set of “rules” about how to write an essay ignores this very important idea about writing. Because of this, essays written using the Five-Paragraph format can often become awkward and repetative.
Rather than learning a set of hard-and-fast rules that you have to follow, this semester we will be learning strategies that you can apply to a variety of writing tasks and situations so that your writing is more effective. Most of all, we will operate under the following assumption:
No one assigns scholars and researchers essays for homework. Instead, professional academic writers use their writing in scholarly journals and books because the want to communicate complex arguments to specific audiences. No one forces them to do this. They choose to write in order to join a larger conversation that they believe is important and urgent. They write essays, articles, and books to join the conversations already happening in their discipline because they have an important idea that needs to be shared.
Your college courses will ask you to do more than write essays that simply repeat what you have learned. Instead, college courses will require you to become scholars-in-training. Through reading and research, you will learn about topics in the discipline and “listen” to the conversations already happening. Through writing research-based argumentative essays, you will join into those conversations and add to them.
The Burkean Parlor Metaphor
If you’re still confused about what we mean when we say “join into the conversation,” the Burkean Parlor Metaphor might help clarify things.
Kenneth Burke was a 20th century philosopher and rhetorician who argued that research is always part of an ongoing and unending conversation. When you begin to research a topic, you should do so with the understanding that many voices have already come before you and that many more will continue to come after. When you write your own essays, you are joining that conversation.
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A “parlor” is an old-fashioned term for a gathering space or living room. The Burkean Parlor metaphor asks students to think about their writing as part of something larger than a single essay or single project. This metaphor shows that the strongest academic writing never stands on its own. Every essay must fit into a larger conversation. As a student, research, and writer, you are not inventing or starting the conversation. The parlor already exists. The conversation is already happening. Ignoring those important facts will result in writing that feels out of touch, overly simplistic, or confused.
You can think of the metaphorical parlor as a larger, more general space. Each academic discipline or field of study could be seen as a “parlor.” For example, nursing or computer science are each subjects that have their own conversations. You wouldn’t walk into a nursing class and try to write an essay about computer science. Or, the metaphorical parlor might represent a more specific topic within a discipline or field of study, such as the history of a specific battle or the study of a type of plant.
Parlors are gathering spaces, not lecture halls. In a crowded parlor, you would usually find groups of people talking and conversing with one another, rather than a single voice. The individual groups of conversations represent the sub-topics or themes that a researcher might elect to focus on.
The idea of the Burkean Parlor as a metaphor for research might challenge your previous experiences with school research projects. In the past, you may have experienced research assignments as one-and-done reports about fact-based information. Maybe you had to do a report on a certain historical event or social science concept. Maybe you “listened in” to the conversations and then reported on what you discovered. Maybe you didn’t realize that other conversations were happening about the topic.
College-level writing will ask you to do more.
Take a moment and think about ho2 Tyler Branson’s article, “First Year Composition Prepares Students for Academic Writing” addresses the larger conversation. His essay is fairly short for a piece of academic writing. It is only about 2000 words, or the length of the research paper you’ll do this semester. Yet, in the essay he doesn’t simply give his opinion. He also refers to many other voices and writers including the following:
- His dentist’s beliefs about what English teachers do
- Andrea Lunsford and Karen Lunsford’s study about error in student writing
- Merril Shelis’s article “Why Johnny Can’t Write”
- Stanley Fish’s New York Times editorial about student writing and composition courses
- Richard Arum and Josipa Roska’s book Academically Adrift
- The Conservative Website Minding the Campus
- Elizabeth Wardle’s essay about writing in general
By citing and references those other writers and voices, Branson shows his reader that there is already a larger conversation happening about the writing skills of college students. He uses in-text references to establish the agreed upon facts, and his citations also show that the conversation is still going on.
His references also proves that he has deep knowledge about the topic. He has clearly read a lot about this issue, enough so that he has identified specific themes within the conversation. By showing that he understands the larger conversation first, he is able to write in response.
Branson’s essay is a good example of the same strategies and skills that student writers will need to develop for success in their college courses. The academic writing tasks you are assigned in college courses will ask you to do more than simply “listen” and obtain factual information. For the writing you do in your college courses, you’ll go beyond reporting on facts. Instead, you’ll actually join the conversation.
But just like joining any conversation, you need to first listen before you speak or write. And just like any conversation, you need to see your entrance into the conversation as an opening, with the understanding that others may read and respond to what you write.
Reflect on Your Reading
- Think about a writing assignment you’ve done in the past. What level of knowledge did you develop about the topic? How does the description of joining the conversation differ from the writing you’ve done in the past?
- Does joining the conversation sound easier or harder than the research you’ve done in the past? What might be the benefits of writing from deep knowledge? What might be the challenges?
- Think back to the first essay in this book, “You Can Learn to Write in General,” by Elizabeth Wardle. What specific conversations is she addressing? What beliefs is she trying to correct?
- Imagine that Elizabeth Wardle and Tyler Branson were sitting down to discuss the topic of academic writing. What do you think they would each say? Do you see any relationship between Wardle’s argument about writing in general and Branson’s argument about the goals of FYC? Where do you think they would agree? Where do you think they would disagree?