Monday, September 7, 2009

The Elbow Bartholomae Debate

Bartholomae disagrees with Peter Elbow's approach to writing; but, he is also very open minded to hearing his approach to things. Bartholomae approaches this debate by giving his personal views which for the most part are contradictory with Elbow's and then starts to throw out questions for the reader and himself to ponder about approaching writing.

One thing that Bartholomae believes is that academic writing is what truly is learnt at an academy, that this is key to what the instructors are there to do. He thinks that without teachers, writing is impossible. This all contradicts what Elbow has said. He said that he suffered the most when it was all done for the instructors. That writing isn't about teachers and is done the best when writing becomes about you and not what the professor is looking for or a due date.

Bartholomae continues on with saying that part of writing is learning how to critique and that this is practice to improve ones own writing. Part of critiquing he says is using that red pen and making corrections and showing perspective on writing; that this is how to better oneself when it does come to writing. Bartholomae says that we don't only learn more from perspective taking, but also from "literary devices" that are of course, taught by teachers. He believes that writing is a process and part of this is being taught the art of writing. He thinks that people learning to write should be able to learn to write in a way that makes them sound elegant, smart, independent,.. and the only way to go about this is to really be taught the style of writing.

The points that Bartholomae argues contradict what Elbow believes and what Elbow has really learnt from himself over time. But, everyone can have their own way of approaching writing. Elbow and Bartholomae clearly have two different personalities. These two different personality traits can be seen as someone who is more abstract and someone who is more contructive and does things in a more outlined, in the box type of fashion.

Questions
  1. How does Bartholomae approach a writing task?
  2. Can there be more than one right way to write?

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