Bizzell: Cognition, Convention, & Certainty

Patricia Bizzell talks about the important relationship between writing and thinking and how it relates to students. She mentions the "writing problem" and how it is actually a thinking problem because it was the teachers who thought their job was to take the students with good ideas and help them put those ideas into words, then take those with the not-so-good ideas and set them on the right path. This section fails to discuss anything about creativity, and I think that this may be part of what Bizzell was talking about with the writing problem. She makes a good point that some students have such a difficulty writing in Standard English that teachers can't even begin to see the students creativity, or spend time with them, evolving their creativity. Teachers, in this situation, have to "go back to the basics". (i.e. grammer and mechanics.)

She also talks about two opposing theoretical camps : inner - directed and outer - directed. The inner - directed camps focus on a universal, "one-size-fits-all" kind of way of teaching that's all about the language- learning and thinking processes. The problem with this is that not everyone is the same. We're from different cultures, different discourse communities, we don't all learn the same. That's why there is the outer - directed camp. This camp focuses on "social processes whereby language-learning and thinking capacities are shaped."

Bizzell also critiqued Flower and Hayes' article, saying that there were good points as well as points that were missed. I always find it helpful when an author explains another authors' works through their point of view. It helps me to better understand the ideas of the latter.

All in all, the most important thing I got out of this reading was the importance of not using a "one-size-fits-all" teaching environment.