Elbow/Kroll

I found the Peter Elbow article "The Music of Form" interesting for multiple reasons. At first I held resistance to the comparison he makes with music. Then, as I kept reading, I realized that in a creative writing context, what he's saying absolutely applies. “Sentences themselves illustrate this truth about the experience of language,” Elbow tells us, “sentences are little pieces of energy or music—they have rhythm and melody— even on the page. Or, rather, they have energy, rhythm, and melody if the writer has been successful. A good sentence pulls us in and leads us on to the end; it sets up expectation and relief” (626). I'm not sure where my hesitancy came from in thinking about applying this same concept with composition. I guess part of the bias that's been ingrained in me that composition must be boring, that it can't or doesn't have a creative component to it. This article, much like the box-logic one, is starting to break away at my preconceived notions about the ways in which a composition course can be.

I was grateful when Elbow got into how to take his ideas and to apply them to expository and analytical writing that is done in a composition classroom. The example he gives of Martin Luther King's speech was particularly helpful. Not only would that speech be a good example of the ethos/logos/pathos rhetorical triangle, but I think providing it to students to see how like music, there are repetitions of phrases and metaphors and other speech patterns (635). I think getting students students to think about how these pieces is something not necessarily stressed in composition classes, and yet the more I think about it, the more I begin to believe it's a vital component in creating engaging and moving writing.

The section “Binding Time with Voice” reminded me of something Drew mentioned he does in his class where he has them read aloud their essays during the peer review process. Like Elbow, Drew understands that “when we hear naturally spoken language—or when we hear a difficult text read out loud well—we don’t have to work so hard to understand the meaning...So if a writer is skilled enough to write sentences that readers actually hear—hearing the accents, rhythms, and melody in the silent words on the page—readers will actually “hear” some of the meaning” (643).

As an aside, when Elbow talks about composition textbooks and how even though “they are impressively well organized in all these signposting ways (along with the best graphics that money can buy). Yet they often put readers to sleep” (633). Janessa and I have been discussing this issue with a lot of the different textbooks we've been looking at for our textbook review. A few of the ones we've looked at are well put-together and organized beautifully. Upon closer reading though, we found the application for certain types of projects confusing or the reading material too difficult. I can't speak for Janessa, but I found myself having the same lost feeling that Elbow describes and the same sense of the pieces not “hanging together or gelling as readers” (633).

The “Arguing Differently” article by Barry Kroll was also enlightening for me, most specifically the three scenarios he provides to his students that show the different approaches he calls the conciliatory, the integrative, and the deliberative (38). Originally when I first thought about how I'd teach argument, I considered having a debate in a class, but I'm afraid that students in a debate would do all the things Kroll describes. I like Kroll's approach to argument better. In some ways, it reminds me of the concept of countering a text that Joseph Harris talks about in his book “Rewriting”.


Reading Barry Kroll's article made me wonder if he had a composition textbook so that I could see in more depth his teaching strategies for other types of academic writing. He has a few books, most of them out-of-print, one of which called “Strategies for Academic Writing: A Guide for College Students” and also a book on teaching the Vietnam War in literature which I thought interesting. According to the bio on Amazon, Kroll believes that “students should be personally absorbed in a topic—emotionally connected to key issues and texts—if inquiry is to be more than a perfunctory exercise.” Even though this quote comes from a book unrelated to composition, I think the central idea of it is an important one and I wanted to share it here.