Teaching Composition: Current Theories and Practices

Publisher Summary This chapter explores the current theories and practices regarding teaching composition. Writing is dynamic. Ideas and events influence and are influenced by writing. Writing is never neutral, never objective for writers or readers. Writing is communicative. Writing communicates about something; there must be a subject matter. The meaning conveyed in writing is always constructed and interpreted, by both writers and readers. Meaning is not inherent in the marks on the page or electronic blips on a screen. Writing is contextual. To some, the term context simply means the linguistic context of a word. Writing is collaborative. Writers depend on interaction with others whether in thought, text, observation, or personal contact to consider and reconsider, shape and reshape their ideas. In this chapter, an approach to teaching writing that is dynamic, communicative, constructive, contextual, and collaborative has been encouraged. Composition teachers have generally approached their teaching in one of three ways, often referred to as a current–traditional approach, a neoromantic (expressivist) approach, or a neoclassicist (rhetorical) approach. Language as interpretation focuses on the communicative acts surrounding language. Teachers need to address a number of complexities and complications during the process of writing.