“I have tried to present both logical and rhetorical principles in conjunction with exercises in composing and to show the choices we make when we write can be made more intelligently and with a greater sense of control if we have a method” (p.2).
“The making of meaning is the work of the active mind, of what used to be called the imagination–that power to create, to discover, to respond to forms of all kinds.” (2)
“My guiding philosophical principle is that this form-finding and form-creating is a natural activity; the books central pedagogical principle is that we teach our students how to form by teaching them that they form” (2).
“It [this book] offers not rules and exhortations but assisted invitations to students of composition to discover what they are trying to do and thereby how to do it…I.A. Richards who once claimed that what we need in teaching reading and writing is “not so much some improved philosophic sets and psychological doctrine…as sets of sequenced exercises through which…people could explore, for themselves, their own abilities and grow in capacity, practical and intelligential, as result. In most cases, perhaps, this amounts to offering them assisted invitations to attempt to find out just what they are trying to do and thereby how to do it'” (2).
“A composition is a bundle of parts: sutdents are invited to explore for themselves how discovering the parts and developing ways of bundling them are interdependent operations.” (3)
How could I develop a material that enables students, ultimately to do this?: “The real test of any method for carrying through any process is not how well it works in the proving ground, but the qulaity of hte guidance it offers elsewhere. Students should be encouraged to make this book’s method their own by putting it to wok in the writing they do for other courses.” (3)
“In my view, any exercise…can have heuristic value only if students know what they are trying to do. Discovering how to work is contingent on exploring what is to be done: a method of composing should continually ensure that the how and the what and the whey are seen and experienced in dialectical relationship. There are two consequences of this methodological principle: one is that the exercises will be carefully limited in scope; the other is that, since what is being presented is “everything at once,” there will be lots of repetition.” (4)
“…since repetition is, after all, a fundamental aspect of form.” (5)
“The challenge is to make that repetition have a cumulative effect by having students see how principle and practice are related. There is a spiraling effect in each of the several composition courses I teach…” (5)
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