April 8: Donald M. Murray, "Teaching Writing as a Process Not a Product"
Murray's manifesto on teaching writing as a process was influential in changing the teaching of composition in the early seventies. What is the difference between the writing "product" and the "process"? Why does Murray emphasize the process and not the product? How does teaching the process help the writing student? In your own composition courses, have you been taught the process or the product? Which is better? When it comes to writing, isn't the product important? Have you ever received a grade on the process? Discuss Murray's distinction between the process and the product in teaching composition, analyzing the benefits (and/or limitations) of such an approach.

April 10: John C. Brereton, ed., Introduction to The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College
Brereton's long introduction traces the history of college composition courses, from the birth of the modern composition program (instigated at Harvard in the late nineteenth century) to its stabilization in the 1920s. Brereton shows how composition became a regular part of the curriculum in American college, but also how it became marginalized as a field of study. Why is it that, if composition courses became standard in American colleges, "composition" as a field of academic study became consistently denigrated and undermined? Why was teaching composition left to part-time faculty, graduate assistants, and non-Ph.D.s, while the "regular" members of English departments taught mainly literature courses? Why weren't composition teachers taken seriously (an attitude which arguably is still with us)? Why wasn't studying composition not considered real "research"? Describe the contrast between the rising popularity of composition courses in American colleges and the increasingly lowly status of the teacher of those courses.

April 15: Haswell and Haswell, "Gendership and the Miswriting of Students"
Haswell and Haswell offer solid evidence that gender bias is difficult to avoid when it come to evaluating and critiquing student writing. How does gender bias affect the way readers interpret student writing? How does the sex of the reader shape attitudes about the writer's ability? Does gender bias always present a handicap to women students or do male student writers ever suffer a disadvantage do to gender bias? How might one address the problem of gender bias? Can a reader truly interpret and judge writing without gender bias? Can a reader really adopt "gender neutrality" when it comes to sizing up a writer? Discuss the role of gender in reading and evaluating student writing as determined by Haswell and Haswell.

April 17: Joseph M. Williams, "The Phenomenology of Error"
Williams suggests that grammar error is really a complicated process that involves not only what's written on the page but varied and changing reactions of individual readers to what they perceive as "error." For example, he cites several examples where grammar handbook writers violate their own rules. How important then is correct grammar to "good" writing? Is "correct" grammar totally relative, dependent on the whims and fancies of individual readers? How much should the writer concern herself with grammar? Is grammar separate from thought in writing? Did you pass the test, as revealed in the very last paragraph of the essay? Did you spot any "errors"? If not, why not? Discuss the significance (or insignificance) of using correct grammar in the context of Williams' findings.