Fall 2009 English 221 Preliminary Group Research Topics

Orality and Literacy (“Voice”): history, linguistics, psychology, folklore, anthropology—what is the relationship between the two modes of language?  What happens when cultures and people move between the two?  Is learning academic prose like learning another literacy, another English further removed from one’s home-tongue/cradle-tongue?  Why is “the paper” the privileged form of discourse in higher education?  Which shapes which—are written words externalized oral speech or can written words become internalized and reemerge as oral speech?: Helena, Sarah, Carlyn, Elise, Carrie, Alayna

What political and other hierarchical forces in the social context of speaking and writing influence student performance?: Lily, Mollie, Carlyn, Laurel, David Adams, Sarah

Collaboration—why is it not encouraged though often used, especially in post-graduate contexts like theater, art, natural sciences, and business?  David Ford, Camden, Lily, Michael, Laurel (and Technology as a means of collaboration—social networking, email, Blackboard, etc. [including Goucher courses?]).

Writing as self-definition, self-creation, and student writers seeking authority among the codes of discourse and authority structures of the college: Mahria, David Ford, Michael, Alayna, Laurel, David Adams, Sarah.

What is the relationship between writing and movement, between movement of the body and movement of thoughts, between writing rituals and movement rituals/dances?  Elise, Peter, Mollie, Mahria, Alayna, Carrie  [Related to “writer’s block and ‘flow’ in composition” below?]

TAs and Tutors as student intermediaries in student writers’ learning and composing processes: what are their roles, what can they accomplish that professors cannot, how should they be compensated for their work (pay, credit, noble titles and robes of state)?  Lily, Carlyn, Helena, Laurel

Teacher/student/tutor relationships with respect to Authority in the college understood as a system, and writing as a medium of negotiating individuals’ and groups’ authority within the system: Peter, Laurel, David Adams

How do professors design assignments and grade papers?  How did they learn to do so—training in grad school, in-service training, or none?  What different grading standards exist in a single college community or between college communities?  Are rubrics used and if so, are they specific to the assignment, the professor (for all assignments), the department (for all professors) or the college (e.g., College Writing Proficiency)?  How do profs comment  on papers (Elbow “response”) and grade papers (Elbow “evaluation”)—by grade, marginal or head/end note, check-plus-minus, other?  Mollie, Laurel, David Adams

How are students taught to write in Freshman Composition (here, other schools, other eras) and how do they learn to write after freshman year (e.g., in disciplines, for specific instructors, etc.)?  How do people learn to like writing?  What is the relationship between writer’s block and “flow” in composition?  Carrie, Peter