Response to Donald C. Stewart, “What Is an English Major, and What Should It Be?” Albert B. Cook Reply Donald C. Stewart

Looking and Listening for My Voice Toby Fulwiler Signs and Numbers of the Times: Harper’s “Index” as an Essay Prompt Brenda Jo Brueggemann

Ruth Ray, Ellen Barton, Response to Christina Haas and Linda Flower, "Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1989), pp. 480-481

Preface - Sidney Greenbaum Introduction - Alan C Purves PART ONE: THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS Culture, Writing and the Curriculum - Judit Kadar-Fulop The Problem of Comparability of Writing Tasks - Anneli Vahapassi Developing a Rating Method for Stylistic Preference - R Elaine Degenhart and Sauli Takala A Cross-Cultural Pilot Study PART TWO: NATIONAL DIFFERENCES IN WRITING STYLES Writers in Hindi and English - Yamuna Kachru Cultural Variation in Persuasive Student Writing - Ulla Connor and Janice Lauer Cultural Variation in Reflective Writing - Robert Bickner PART THREE: TRANSFER OF RHETORICAL PATTERNS IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING The Second Language Learner and Cultural Transfer in Narration - Anna Soter Narrative Styles in the Writing of Thai and American Students - Chantanee Indrasuta Cultural Differences in Writing and Reasoning Skills - Sybil Carlson The Rating of Student Performance in Written Composition - Young Mok Park PART FOUR: SUMMING UP Contrastive Rhetoric and Second Language Learning - Robert B Kaplan Notes Toward a Theory of Contrastive Rhetoric

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English studies are caught up in a debate over whether we should see individual cognition or social and cultural context as the motive force in literate acts. This conflict between cognition and context (Bartholomae, Berlin, Bizzell, Knoblauch) has special force in rhetoric and composition because it touches some deeply-rooted assumptions and practices. Can we, for instance, reconcile a commitment to nurturing a personal voice, individual purpose, or an inner, self-directed process of meaning making, with rhetoric's traditional assumption that both inquiry and purpose are a response to rhetorical situations, or with the more recent assertions that inquiry in writing must start with social, cultural, or political awareness? These values and assertions run deep in the discipline. One response to these differences is to build theoretical positions that try to polarize (or moralize) cognitive and contextual perspectives. We know that critiques based on dichotomies can fan lively academic debates. They can also lead, Mike Rose has argued, to reductive, simplified theories that narrow the mind and page of student writers. In the end, these attempts to dichotomize may leave us with an impoverished account of the writing process as people experience it and a reductive vision of what we might teach.

Henry or William James, Britton has always respected the symbiotic and dynamic mutuality of action/reflection, flights/perchings; and, like Jerome Bruner, he has reinvented his field through intellectual ventures across the board and close scrupulous observation of/interaction with children and young people learning. In the light of such exemplary virtue-moral, intellectual, pedagogical-it is indeed regrettable that Britton's published work should have been the victim of persistently egregious misreading in the USA. As far as I can determine, such misreadings do not derive from the pusillanimous misrepresentations of his British criticsWhitehead, Inglis, or Adams-so much as from direct misunderstanding or incomprehension: many examples spring to mind, two representative cases being the St. Martin's Bibliography and an essay by Burton Hatlen in Thomas Newkirk's Only Connect. Aside from Britton's own work-Language and Learning, The Development of Writing Abilities, and Prospect and Retrospect (ed. Gordon Pradl)-there is no text currently available in the USA that offers a reliable and comprehensive account of his achieve-

In the summer of 1936, George Orwell sat at his desk in his cottage in Wallington, Near Baldock, Herfordshire. with birds chattering or squabbling in the rafters overhead, he began to write an essay about shooting an elephant, an essay which would become remarkably popular. (See Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life [London: Secker and Warburg, 19801, p. 200.) Most remarkable of all, even for the author of 1984, Orwell foresaw with incredible clarity my 1980 freshman composition class: black, Chicago bornand-raised Paula Smith; Massey-Ferguson-seed-cap-wearing Dale Harvey; all A's, small-town (Sheldon) Kevin Youngers, and all the others. With at least my Iowans in mind Orwell wrote, And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a (Shooting an Elephant, in The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus [New York: Harcourt, 19681, I, 239). Of course the notion that Orwell included a cow comparison for farm-oriented Dale and Kevin is absurd. But nearly all the editors of the composition textbooks we call readers imply that Orwell (and other authors) wrote specifically for college students or generally for anyone ever able to read English. Actually Orwell's concern about a specific audience began before my students were born. In a May 27, 1936 response to a query from Michael Lehmann, editor of New Writing, Orwell writes:

I. GROWING UP. Elizabeth Wong, The Struggle to Be an All American Girl. Gary Soto, The Jacket. Maya Angelou, Graduation. Harry Mark Petrakis, Barba Nikos. Maxine Hong Kingston, Girlhood Among Ghosts. Maria Laurino, Scents. Grace Paley, The Loudest Voice. Lindsy Van Gelder, The Importance of Being Eleven: Carol Gilligan Takes on Adolescence. Vendela Vida, Bikinis and Tiaras: Quinceaneras. Countee Cullen, Incident. II. EDUCATION. Sun Park, Don't Expect Me to Be Perfect. Daniel Meier, One Man's Kids. Sherman Alexie, Indian Education. Mike Rose, I Just Wanna Be Average. Marcus Marby, Living in Two Worlds. Martin Espada, Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper. III. FAMILIES. Dan Savage, Role Reversal. Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels, The Mommy Wars. Jane Howard, Families. Stephanie Coontz, Where Are the Good Old Days? Ruth Breen, Choosing a Mate. Alfred Kazin, The Kitchen. Theodore Roethke, My Papa's Waltz. IV. DEFINING OURSELVESS. Gish Jen, An Ethnic Trump. Robin D.G. Kelly, The People in Me. Roxane Famanfarmaian, The Double Helix. Tony Morrison, A Slow Walk of Trees. Nicolette Toussaint, Hearing the Sweetest Songs. Judith Ortiz Cofer, The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Maria. Malcolm X, Hair. Nell Bernstein, Goin' Gansta, Choosin' Cholita: Teens Today Claim a Racial Identity. Wendy Rose, Three Thousand Dollar Death Song. V. AMERICAN ENCOUNTERS. Bette Bao Lord, Walking in Lucky Shoes. Michel Guillaume St. Jean de Crevecoeur, What Is an American? Recapture the Flag: 34 Reasons to Love America. Brent Staples, Night Walker. Piri Thomas, Alien Turf. Walter White, I Learn What I Am. Malcolm Gladwell, Black Like Them. Jeannne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Arrival at Manzanar. Dwight Okita, In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation Centers. VI. CHANGING PLACES. Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways of Belonging in America. Anton Shammas, Amerka, Amerka: A Palestinian Abroad in the Land of the Free. Mark Salzman, Teacher Mark. John David Morley, Living in a Japanese Home. Laura Bohannan, Shakespeare in the Bush. George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant. Jamaica Kincaid, On Seeing England for the First Time. Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal. Gloria Anzaldua, To Live in the Borderlands Means You. VII. HOW WE LIVE. Geraldine Brooks, Unplugged. Pico Iyer, Home Is Every Place. Robert Levine, Tempo, The Speed of Life. Lars Eighner, On Dumpster Diving. Barbara Brandt, Less Is More: A Call for Shorter Work Hours. Michael Pollan, Town-Building Is No Mickey Mouse Operation. Aurora Levins Morales, Class Poem. VIII. COMMUNICATING. Gloria Naylor, The Meaning of a Word. Amy Tan, Mother Tongue. Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation. Ian Buruma, The Road to Babel. Jack G. Sheehan, The Media's Image of Arabs. Alexis Bloom, Switched on Bhutan. Jasua Gameson, Do Ask, Do Tell. Lisel Mueller, Why We Tell Stories. Credits. Author/Title Index.

Edward B. Versluis, Response to Bruce T. Petersen, et alia, "Computer-Assisted Instruction and the Writing Process: Questions for Research and Evaluation,", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Oct., 1985), pp. 346-347

Thomas E. Blom, Response to Maxine Hairston, "The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the Teaching of Writing", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Dec., 1984), pp. 489-493

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Ann E. Berthoff, Response to Richard Gebhardt, "Writing Processes, Revision, and Rhetorical Problems: A Note on Three Recent Articles", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Feb., 1984), p. 95

Professor Petrosky's review of Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing raises one crucial question I think a review of a writing text should raise: what theoretical assumptions about the psychology of writing underlie this book? However, he uses the occasion to attack an out-moded, logical positivist version of communication theory that treats thought as an object to be transferred and that ignores the constructive nature of both reading and writing. I am perplexed that he reads my book as an example of this position-a position which neither of us holds. communication model, with its senders and receivers, which he attributes to me is, in the book, in fact attributed to its real source (electrical engineers-the work of Shannon and Weaver in the 1940's). I present the model as a familiar but inadequate metaphor the reader will want to go beyond (We often talk about communication as if it were a physical process One problem with this model is that it turns the writer into a delivery boy. .. . This model, however, has a limitation ..). In context, the main function of the two-page passage he cites so extensively was to challenge that very model and to introduce a ten-page section entitled The Creative Reader, which draws on current research describing the constructive nature of reading. Just as writers work with metaphor, intuition, and images, as well as logic, in order to compose, readers likewise build rich and sometimes surprisingly original internal structures in their effort to comprehend. Although Professor Petrosky and I clearly differ on how to write a textbook-on what ideas to value, on how explicit one should try to be about thinking processes-I do not believe that my position or the book itself fits into the unattractive pigeonhole he has in mind. As a teacher, I see no contradiction at all between fostering the experience of discovery, of listening to readers, of reseeing one's own ideas-things we all value and teach towardand asking students to bring a more self-conscious, problem-solving approach to their writing. I have difficulty imagining any serious teacher who would. premise which underlies my commitment to teaching heuristics is that writing is not a rule-governed act; nor is it so essentially mysterious that little can be said about it or taught. My goal is to offer students a repertoire of alternative strategies for dealing with this complex process. Trying to be articulate about the thinking processes you would teach may be risky, but I think it is necessary. In taking a strategic approach to writing, one offers writers some of the power that comes from an awareness of one's own thinking processes and a sense of options. Our discipline is growing in the depth and diversity of its theories. If we

A. M. Tibbetts, Response to Mary K. DeShazer, "Sexist Language in Composition Textbooks: Still a Major Issue?", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 34, No. 4, Coherence and Cohesion: What Are They and How Are They Achieved? (Dec., 1983), pp. 485-490