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Arielle Brown
Dr. Roggenbuck
Theory and Practice of Writing
9/27/2015
Teaching Writing to the Diverse Writer
Writing is not an easy topic to teach. There are so many different types of writers and
different ways to go about writing it can be hard to find what is the best way to teach it. Some
strategies are universal but others are individual to the student or particular type of writing.
Personally, I am a creative writer, professional writer, and an academic writer which have some
elements in common but also have different rules and conventions that is not generic at all, and
because of this, teaching writing to someone like me may pose more of a challenge then teaching
writing to a student who is only writing for academics.
First of all, as a creative writer, it was essential for my teachers in elementary school to
encourage curiosity, creativity, openness, persistence, and engagement, four of the habits of the
mind discussed by the National Conference of Teaching English in the article Framework for
Success in Postsecondary Education (Framework) (2). I was the kid who seemed to struggle
with school no matter how much help you, as the teacher, gave me. Not every student will be
like me, many will understand the lessons you teach them and not have a hard time, but there
will be students like me who struggle and have a hard time not daydreaming in class. You have
to encourage engagement in these students. They are going to want to stop and stare out into
space when you give instructions and therefore miss important aspects of the directions and their
learning will suffer because of it. Often times the more creative a student is the more likely they
are to day dream rather than stay engaged in the moment or task at hand. This is because their
mind goes to something that seems more interesting. By encouraging creativity they have an

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opportunity to make that little world they keep escaping to a reality on paper. The more you
encourage creativity the more likely it is that they will use it in their day to day life, and you
never know if they will be more like me and become a creative writer. However creative writers
also need to be open to both a critical analysis of their writing as well as new ideas and they need
to be persistent enough to keep changing their work and growing to become the best creative
writers that they can be.
More so, Framework discusses the need for reading and critical analysis in becoming a
better writer. This is hugely important to creative writers because unless we are reading up on
the type of writing we are experimenting with, we will never learn the conventions and
appropriate ways to write our work. On top of that, we have to critically analyze others and our
own writing. It is immensely important that we take a look at our work from as close to an
outsiders point of view as possible and try to revise our story accordingly. We have to be able to
sit back and listen to what others have to say about our writing and decide if what is being said
will take away from the point of the story. Teachers need to be teaching creative writers how to
build these skills so that they have an opportunity to become successful writers.
It is not enough to simply be encouraged to use the right habits of mind or to be taught
to be a critical reader, although both are highly important. It also helps for teachers to teach their
students what the different types of writing are and how they all connect. A fantastic article that
goes into this is Four Philosophies of Composition (Four Philosophies) by Richard
Fulkerson. He explains what the differences are between the four types of writing- rhetoric,
mimetic, expressionist, and formalist- and how they all interact with each other. I personally see
them coexisting in my creative writing because I focus heavily on expressionism and mimetic
writing with a slight focus on formalist writing. When writing a story or novel, especially

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fiction, it is highly important to be able to express yourself and emotions in a way that the reader
feels an emotional connection or else they will not continue to read. By ignoring expressionism,
the reader, or teacher as it may be, misses the whole point of the piece of a creative work. If you
only look at the formalist side of writing and the grammatical errors, while important, you will
miss the side of the story that is meant to show you an event, to display for you the
circumstances in which the story is happening. However, formalist writing has its place in
creative writing as well. For instance, if a writer has a lot of errors in their writing the reader will
be taken out of the moment and focused on the mistakes. So, while it is important to keep an eye
out for grammatical errors, it is not the most important part of the story.
Mimetic writing has its place in creative writing as well because while most authors start
by writing what they know, at some point in time they must try to explain a situation they have
never been in. Be it a world that does not actually exist, a moment they did not live, or a
circumstance that seems unfathomable to them in the moment, the writer should not shy from
writing about it simply because they do not fully understand it. Sometimes through writing they
gain more understanding.
Creative writing also has its rhetorical aspect as the writer goes through and tries to
convince the reader that what is on the page is believable and relatable enough to keep the
readers interest. While this is very different from the way that Fulkerson describes the four
philosophies interacting, it is an example of it in my everyday writing life. Students need to
understand what these four types of writing are to be able to successfully use any of the four
philosophies, however, it is important for them to be taught which are most helpful in developing
their writing skills and which are more appropriate for what type of writing. As stated above,

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this is how the four types of writing are appropriate for creative writing, but that does not mean
that expressionism will be as welcomed in an academic piece as it is in my personal writing.
As a professional writer it is important for me to know many of the same aspects I need
as a creative writer but there are more aspects I need to learn as well. For instance, in
Framework I also need to remember responsibility and metacognition. I need to be
responsible with my writing as far as making sure I have given the information needed as well as
stayed to a strict deadline. As a professional writer, if I do not show responsibility no one will be
interested in hiring me. There are also more people counting on me to make my strict deadlines.
If an item that needs assembled goes out on a specific day and I have not finished writing the
manual, the items release may need to be held back. I also need metacognition during this
process. If I dont understand the culture of those who are reading the manuals or whatever it is I
am writing, my piece of writing will not be effective which is the core goal of professional
writers. I will also need to read up on the audience that I am writing for as well as typical ways
to produce the project I am working on so that I am able to write the best document possible.
With the Four Philosophies, creative writing focused heavily on expressionist, while
professional writing focuses more on rhetoric. As a professional writer, it is my job to convince
my readers that what I have to say in my document is important and that they should do as I say
the way I say it, especially in a manual. However, it is important that I do fully grasp what I am
writing about and that my writing is as close to error free as possible since it is more technical. It
is also discouraged to use expression in these pieces as it is mainly focused on getting a
particular thing done, not on the emotions involved in it.

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Finally, I am an academic writer which combines all of the habits of mind from
Framework and all of the philosophies from Four Philosophies, granted in academic writing
Im going to be less focused on expressionism. While it may seem unimportant that I bothered
to go through and show how Framework and Four Philosophies affects me in all these
different areas, I argue that it is essential for me to do so. You are not going to have a student
that is universal and can write well simply because you taught them the basics. They need to
understand and fully grasp what it means to use expressionist writing as well as memetic,
formalist, and rhetorical writing. Yes, they are all used in academic writing but there is a heavier
focus on formalist and rhetorical writing academically which is not as important to a creative
writer.
This predicament is explained by Harris in The Idea of Community in the Study of
Writing where he explains how we all write in a community format. A writer is never writing
simply as one thing or another, instead, they are a combination of all the communities that they
were raised in. Harris goes ahead and quotes Williams statement of one does not step cleanly
and wholly from one community to another, but is caught instead in an always changing mix of
dominant, residual, and emerging discourses (Williams as quoted by Harris, 17). I cannot leave
behind my creative writing community any more than I can leave behind my academic or
professional writing community in any given piece of writing, they are all a part of who I am and
therefore make their presence known in my work. As a teacher, you cannot expect a student to
be able to leave their communities behind, but you do have to do as David Bartholomae suggests
in Inventing the University and teach your students how to learn to speak [your] language
(Bartholomae 4).

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While a student may never fully leave behind his/her community, they can learn to write
and speak in the language of an academic professional. That is the ultimate goal. To teach them
what it means to be a part of the academic community and to give them the tools to write, speak,
and act as an active member of that community. However, this needs to start in high school. Too
often students are thrown into college expected to know the correct way to write even though
they were never taught the skills. By working with your students to teach them the language and
what is expected of them, you will help them become far more successful in college and after
college life.
One of the best ways to help a student improve in their writing and their use of language
is by making comments on their papers as Sommers explains in Across the Drafts. It is helpful
for you to be a teacher that has a conversation with the student through their paper. It is helpful
to correct a paper and have certain general comments that could work for each writer, but it
should be personalized as well. By explaining in a comment section of the paper something that
you see them struggling with that could be improved on and how to improve it, the writer has
more of an ability to actually become a better writer (Sommers, 248-257).
This is essential for a writer as diverse as I am because there are so many different types
of writing that I do and each one needs a different set of skills. For creative writing I need to be
good at showing over telling and capturing a story moment by moment which takes a different
set of skills than needed to be an academic writer in which I am arguing an interpretation of a
piece of writing. What I do as an academic writer in the humanities is also very different the
type of writing expected from me as a professional writing which is meant to be short, concise,
and to the point. To do this I need good professors who can explain to me how to writer for the
different genres.

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Lastly, it is important to keep in mind an article by Sommers called Revision Strategies
of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers. This article holds essential information for
all writers. It is about what students believe revision is verses what revision actually is. One of
the most important aspects of writing to teach any writer is revision. They need to understand
that revision isnt just going in and changing a word here and there but instead is improving on
the argument for academic writing, the conciseness of scientific and professional writing, and the
scenery, imagery and many other aspects like that in creative writing, and changing their
language for the appropriate audience and community (Sommers, 380-381). A writing process is
never fully over. The writer can always go back, fix up an area that is cloudy or simply not
strong, and improve on the overall piece of writing. By explaining this to students, they will
learn quickly why revision isnt a once and done five minute exercise that is useless but that it is
actually essential to growing as a writer. The more a student is willing to revise the better they
will find their writing is becoming and through that may even take their piece of writing out of
the classroom.
Students have the ability to learn all of these different aspects of writing and what it
means to be a good writer but they need a good teacher to lead them down the path. Teachers
stop being influential when they stop having conversations with the writer. The conversations
can come through comments on the paper or a personal conversation with the student, or even
from reading articles about writing, but you have to start the conversation. The best way to be
the best teacher you can be is to go through and explain what a writer is, what it means to be a
writer, and all the elements of a paper, not simply how to outline and revise. If you explain to
them what this paper has shown, I believe you can have a greater impact on your students.

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Works Cited:
Bartholomae, David. Inventing the University Journal of Basic Writing, 1986. Print.
Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, &
National Writing Project. Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncomercial-NoDervis 3.0 Unported License, 2011. Print.
Fulkerson, Richard. Four Philosophies of Composition College Composition and
Communication, 1979. Print.
Harris, Joseph. The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing College Composition and
Communication, 1989. Print.
Sommers, Nancy. Across the Drafts College Composition and Communication, Vol. 58, No. 2;
2006, 248-257. Print.
Sommers, Nancy. Revision Strategies of Student Writers and Experienced Adult Writers
College Composition and Communication, Vol. 31, No. 4; 1980, 378-388. Print.