A Little Bit of This and a little Bit of That

Bizzell seems to be one of the most practical figures that we have looked at so far. She seems to be able to look at what everyone is saying about composition, and take the pieces that make sense from each of them. She has used her experience in the field to sort through what everyone is saying, and pick out what makes the most sense to her and combining it into her own beliefs. She has not tried to reinvent the wheel or create a theory that opposes what is being said by other s in the field. She listens, and observes and then uses all of the pieces to come up with a complete picture. I think that Shaynee was correct in using the puzzle as an analogy for Bizzell’s theory.
Bizzel’s thoughts on writing and thinking were very interesting. We can’t just stop at teaching our students how to write. By giving them only the skills to write, we assume that our students will be able to use them. The problem is, our students don’t always have the skills that they need to think. They are often lacking the basic understanding of how to approach a problem or how to think through something that is difficult. According to Bizzell, one of our roles as the teacher is to teach our students to think. They have to be able to do this before they can write effectively. Grammar and punctuation are not important if the thinking is not there. The trick, also according to Bizzell, is that we cannot separate writing from thinking. We have to teach students to connect their writing with their thinking. Writing gives students a way to think through a problem and then go back and retrace their steps. Writing allows them to express a jumble of ideas one at a time in an order that makes sense. We can’t just focus on writing, but on the relationship that writing has with thinking. We can’t look at only one part of the problem.
I also liked Bizzell’s thoughts on the needs of students, and how we meet those needs. Some teachers focus only on additive teaching. They present students with the rules of writing and show them what “good” writing looks like and hope that that will be enough for students to become “good” writers. Other teachers just focus on the students’ role in a discourse community and provide them with select skills that they need in order to succeed. They don’t worry about the formal properties of writing or the ideas that students use to write. These two styles of teaching leave out vital aspects of understanding if they are taken separately. Bizzell suggests a third solution in the combination of both. She advocates the use of the rules and forms of writing alongside the greater implications that writing can have in the society.