Teaching Writing through Literature: Toward the Acquisition of a Knowledge Base.

N

27

Practitioners

College English; Cultural Awareness; English Curriculum; Higher Education; Knowledge Level; Language Processing; Literature Appreciation; Prewriting; Problem Solving; Reader Response; Reader Text Relationship; Reading Comprehension; Reading Skills; Reading Writing Relationship; Teaching Methods; Two Year Colleges; Writing Instruction; Writing Skills

Teaching literature as a basis for teaching writing affords a paradigm for teaching structure and meaning. While a truly integrated English department would put equal emphasis upon composition, language, literature, and reading, two-year college curricula have emphasized composition and challenged literature's place. A reader-based model for teaching literary texts decentralizes the lecturer's role while helping the student make observations and inferences within a discourse of knowledge. Problem solving, comprehension, and cultural literacy must be taught within a content area, not as discrete exercises. Scholars argue that teaching writing while confronting literary text would bring together the technical skills of composition, the cultural knowledge within the linguistic form, and the cultural content literature has to offer. Recent research supports this argument. Sharing first drafts and using summaries as focusing exercises encourage the habit of frequent writing. Literacy depends on specific, finite, sometimes superficial knowledge. There are many reasons to include literature in two-year college curricula so that students, rather than being assigned exercises in writing, can be taught to respond to a unified method of reading and making meaning of what they read. (A list of journals reviewed in "College English" is appended. Endnotes and a 52-item bibliography are also provided.) (JD)

1987

ED273963