I would say the three most important qualities of composition are: understanding of subject/research, ability to persuade, voice. I place understanding of subject/research first because I get annoyed when people write, however skillfully, about something they do not understand. Ability to persuade comes before voice because all "voice" is not necessarily good. My seven year old cousin has voice in her writing - she sounds like a seven year old. Voice must be used for a purpose, and I believe having an audience in mind and persuading that audience gives voice a purpose.
The order of importance also has something to do with how easy or difficult I imagine it would be to teach the skills. It's relatively easy to get across the importance of understanding one's subject, and also easy to explain to a student how to solve the problem - if you don't understand, then go research.
A trickier subject is persuasion, as it requires writers to go beyond themselves to see another person's point of view. Then, the writer must figure out what motivates that other person, how to best persuade him or her. In my opinion, the art of persuasion is this odd blend of turning an objective understanding of other individuals into a subjective, tailored appeal which may or may not touch on reason, logic or anything resembling the apparant objective truth.
Voice is one of those things some people have because they spend elementary school learning to write short stories. Other people spent their formative years having TAAS test concepts crammed down their throats, and so all originality has been taught out of their writing. I wrote stories; voice was not difficult for me. But trying to teach voice? I don't know how to do that, exactly. Somehow, you have to get across this idea: I want to hear your voice -- not the way you actually speak, but some slightly more formalized way of speaking which will feel totally unnatural, and I want you to make that more formalized speech your own. Good luck to all current teachers on voice. I think it's important in the long haul for effective writing and public speaking, and grammar finds itself in this section for me. If you want an educated writing voice, then part of developing your voice on page is learning at least semi-proper grammar. And, I imagine myself telling a room full of eager students, you want an educated writing voice for all academic papers.
That's all for me and the three important composition concepts. Thoughts?
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4 comments:
I agree with your points. Voice, alone, isn't the most important concern in writing. There is power in voice, but to meet the needs of any rhetorical situation voice must work together with content in order to effectively convey or persuade or argue. You have a very strong understanding of persuasion, too. It's difficult to teach persuasion for many of the same reasons it's difficult to teach basic writers: sometimes students can't see outside their own arguments. And their own arguments might be happening inside their own heads rather than on the paper. We'll read about this with Ede/Lunsford's "Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked." It is part writing skill, but it is also part cognitive skill.
Hi Kim!
I feel the same way about voice. I don't know if it's something we actually hear in speaking, rather a style of their own, if you will. I think the students need to know how to write structurally sound before they need to worry about voice. Once they understand proper structure, then they can work into other areas. That's why I agree that there has to be set rules and assignments instead of just writing for the sake of writing. Not everyone can write well when they get to college, and they need that feedback.
Voice is definitely the most personal of your three concepts. While research, proper grammar, and persuasion are teachable, it often seems that voice is something a person has or does not have. I think it is possible to teach how to write with a distinct voice (in other words, to help students find their own voice), but it is much more difficult than a lecture on formatting bibliographies. I think this is why creative writers are so interested in workshopping stories--so students can develop their ideas, style, and even sentences in a more refined manner.
I agree with you. Voice is important, but in order for voice to be effective, a student has to know at least the basic structure of the type of essay they want to write. Persuasion, I (and Dr. Rice!) think, is the hardest to teach. It involves some really advanced thinking about complicated issues. How do you teach someone to look outside of themselves?
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