LINGUIST List 13.107

Thu Jan 17 2002

Review: Collins, P., Community Writing

Editor for this issue: Simin Karimi <siminlinguistlist.org>

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  • Heather Conrad, book review

    Message 1: book review

     Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2002 12:02:20 -0600
    From: Heather Conrad <conradhnsula.edu>
    Subject: book review


    Collins, Paul S. (2001) Community Writing: Researching Social Issues Through Composition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

    Reviewed by Heather K. Conrad, Northwestern State University of Louisiana

    Paul Collins's Community Writing: Researching Social Issues Through Composition is a textbook designed to facilitate the teaching of socially responsive writing within a traditional classroom. In it, Collins puts forth a writing curriculum focused on the practical application of theories of social constructionism and pluralism to conventionally structured composition courses. His text represents an effort to incorporate the increasingly social and cultural bent of composition theory into a practical and fully usable text for the composition classroom without significantly disturbing classroom methods currently in use in many universities. This is a formidable task, to be certain, made no less so by Collins' ambitious goals, which are not only to introduce pluralistic concepts and promote social awareness, but to use these ideas to encourage critical thinking and develop analytical skills. And while the specific and directed approach Collins takes limits the text's usefulness, its practicality and usability make it a worthwhile addition to any composition teacher's library.

    The text is presented in five chapters, with introductory notes to both instructors and students that, together, outline the approach to composition theory and instruction that the text represents. In Collins' "Note to Students," he lays out the foundations of his course for students in accessible language, addressing the notions of community and explaining the importance of the tasks that his text requires of them--attention to multiple perspectives and participation in the "knowledge community" of college (xvi). In his "Note to Instructors," Collins explains the text's connections with social theory, describing the "social-epistemic" basis of his rhetoric and the socially constructed nature of knowledge and identity as he puts it forth (xii). This section also provides an overview of the five chapters of the text:

    Chapter 1 introduces "social construction and pluralism" (xiii) as students select a community and issue to write about, Collins says, while

    Chapter 2 focuses on media research and information- gathering about the background of their chosen community issue.

    Chapter 3 focuses student research toward solutions, emphasizing primary research such as interviews and encouraging attention to multiple points of view.

    Chapter 4 teaches students to use the information they have amassed in the service of logical persuasion, asking them to argue in turn for each several solutions to the problems they address.

    Chapter 5 draws on the assignments of chapters 1-4, asking students to present their semester's work as a unified paper on the community issues they have identified.

    Collins's composition course thus takes shape as a series of recursive lessons, assignments, and examples that jointly lead up to a term paper built from previous research and writing. All student work focuses on a single issue, chosen by the student, which is faced by one of the communities the student belongs to. Each of the first four chapters contains four informal writing assignments and a paper built from those assignments, all dealing with facets of the student's issue. Chapter 5 contains an assignment for a comprehensive term paper on the chosen issue built from the previous four papers.

    In this way, the structure of the text provides a continuously connected manual for developing and integrating writing skills. To illustrate the way the assignments relate to each other and to show how they function when applied to actual students, classrooms, and issues, Collins provides the issue of campaign finance reform as a running example throughout the text. He begins with simple response essays on the importance of voting, then builds on those responses with voter interviews and small research assignments designed to illuminate differing representations of the problem, and ultimately analyzes and argues for workable reforms of campaign financing practices.

    Additional examples of writing on social issues come from each chapter's "Focus On:" section, each addressing a different community issue and some person who has taken action on that issue. These sections seem to function both as further examples of the kind of writing students should seek to produce, and as portraits of role models who were able to influence their communities through the kind of awareness and participation that this textbook advocates. As a whole, then, Collins' approach is at the same time a manual for the creation of socially oriented writing, and an example of that writing in evidence.

    One possible criticism of the book would be its narrow focus and exclusively practical outlook. But in spite of the specific focus on socially aware "reporting" that characterizes the text, more general principles of composition are not ignored. Rather than address such issues in the abstract, however, Collins prefers to rely on a teaching-by-doing approach; the address of issues like elements of the writing process, research techniques, effective argumentation, and logical connection are all addressed within the applied context he has created. Example assignments demonstrate fundamentals like these, and students see them in use rather than read them as rules. For example, debate-oriented assignments in Chapter 4 require students to write counterarguments and rebuttals to their own term papers. Work like this contributes to the development of analytical skills and awareness of multiple perspectives so valuable to this or any composition classroom method. Further, practical sections in each chapter usefully address writing process issues like revision and peer editing, and other specific sections address topics such as website building, text-writing for websites, and designing text visually, all of which make this text suitable for a 21st century classroom.

    More fundamentally, the very nature of Collins' course design, with its recursive assignments and papers, forces students to continually reinvest in their writing process by participating in revision and reevaluation of their own papers, something we all recognize as one of the main challenges of teaching writing. All in all, the text's applied approach shows writing processes in action, and its thorough treatment of a wide variety of issues that pertain to creating written work encourage close and rigorous attention to logical and factual detail, thus fostering clear thinking in students.

    The text's unusually strong emphasis on research, especially as it relies so heavily on popular media sources and interviewing, suits it best perhaps to a class with a journalistic bent. However, the awareness of different points of view, biases, and manipulative representation that such an approach encourages results in a general skepticism toward information that will serve any student well.

    Some may object to the overt sociopolitical focus of the text as fostering a potentially agenda-driven classroom atmosphere. Indeed, one should always be careful, but especially when taking the approach that this text takes, of allowing specific social agendas to take precedence over the general social awareness and skepticism that this text and others like it are designed to encourage.

    Teaching writing in a truly communal and interactive way is an almost insurmountable challenge in the current educational system. This book makes a useful attempt to create a way to do exactly that. However, fitting communal approaches to writing into the structure of typical college writing curricula can often drain vitality from those approaches, and this book does not quite escape its fate.

    In trying to meld traditional rhetorical instruction with a more interactive-communal approach, Collins is forced, to some extent, to stuff burgeoning ideas into a restrictive mold. Because his text needs to be usable and used, he resorts to methodical treatment that, while accessible and clear, can sap the vitality from pluralistic and constantly shifting concepts like community and identity. Nevertheless, from my point of view, the attempt he makes is one that must be made if composition instruction is to remain relevant, vital, and useful to the students who receive it. The measure of success he achieves is an important and exemplary first step in bringing new ideas into the always-resistant composition curriculum. And insofar as the focus of his approach encourages critical thinking, analysis, and evaluation of ideas in students, Collins' Community Writing: Researching Social Issues Through Composition-for its few limitations-gets to the very heart of what it is we seek to do in the composition classroom.

    About the Reviewer: Heather Conrad is a graduate of the College of William and Mary in Virginia, where she earned her B.A. in Interdisciplinary Linguistics in 1993. In 2001, she earned an M.A. in English from Northwestern State University of Louisiana. She is now an instructor in Northwestern's Department of Language and Communication, where she teaches courses in composition and literature and enjoys pursuing diverse research interests, which include cognitive semantics, cultural criticism, and world literatures.