My Acquaintance with Composition Studies

Being of a more scientific mind, I used to be quite skeptical of the research done in composition. Prior to working on my M.A. in English Composition, with an emphasis in TESL, I had worked primarily in the field of psychology. Concentrating on social psychology and cognitive psychology, I was compelled to investigate their applications in education. After two years of studying educational theories, primarily those related to second language acquisition (SLA), I discovered a sub-field of education that peaked my interest, composition. Within composition I discovered a space that I could share with those interested in learning to use language.

My initial reading of Susan Jarratt’s “Rhetoric” frustrated me. I do not believe that I am the only one who felt this way after reading Jarratt’s piece. Since I do have some background derived from The Western Rhetorical Tradition, I find Jarratt to be quite thorough, almost to a fault. She takes her readers through a time line of various changes and applications of rhetoric, yet I get the feeling that she is approaching the lengthy history, not as a rhetorician, but as a compositionist. Jarratt’s perception of rhetoric seems to provide a more detailed summary of the uses of rhetoric by language users. Her perspective leads readers to the current use of Discourse Analysis within the study of rhetoric. During my frustrated reading, I saw points in time where the study of linguistics was starting to emerge.

The field of linguistics applied to composition studies is a likely place for language research to continue. Bartholomae’s continues to explore the field of composition, as it evolves within academics. He mentions the trends of composition and the movement towards writing across the curriculum (WAC). While I am currently taking part in a WAC program, I can’t help but to see applications for these academic studies in primary and secondary education. Peter Elbow’s work, which suggests the communicative nature of writing, rings true to me. Within elementary reading and writing, the focus on form is not being balanced with communicative function. In other words, students are writing, but they do not know for what purpose. This will continue to perplex me, but I find support in the work that is being done at the college level of composition.