The development of advanced writing skills has been neglected in schools of the United States, with even some college graduates lacking the level of ability required in the workplace (National Commission on Writing, 2003, 2004). The core problem, we argue, is an insufficient degree of appropriate task practice distributed throughout the secondary and higher education curriculum. We draw on the power law of skill acquisition, the role of deliberate practice in expert performance, and the uniquely intensive demands that advanced written composition place on working memory to make this case. A major impediment to assigning enough writing tasks is the time and effort involved in grading papers to provide feedback. We close by considering possible solutions to the grading problem.

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The Theory and Practice of Imitation in Classical Rhetoric.

Training advanced writing skills: The case for deliberate practice.

Introduction: the rise of mass writing 1. The status of writing 2. Writing for the State 3. Occupation: author/writing over reading in the literacy development of contemporary young adults 4. When everybody writes Conclusion: deep writing Appendices Notes Bibliography.

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The Rise of Writing: Redefining Mass Literacy

This essay examines the ways in which imitation, as a concept and as a practice, was caught up in the nineteenth century's racial politics. Theoretically, it argues that the interpretation of mimesis labels the imitator and either sustains or reconstitutes power relations within the context of mimetic performance. Historically, the essay contends that during the nineteenth century, and especially after the Civil War, black imitation threatened the dominant systems of white power. European Americans interpreted black mimesis as a primitive instinct, the sign of an inferior "other." Conversely, African Americans used imitation to exercise their liberty and pursue civil rights. Frederick Douglass viewed imitation as a progressive force in public life, and his conceptualization represents an alternative to the reductive construct that existed at the beginning of the twentieth century and continues today.

The Racial Politics of Imitation in the Nineteenth Century

Living Chronic: Agency and Expertise in the Rhetoric of Diabetes

/pdf/out-of-style-reanimating-stylistic-study-in-composition-and-23lstbdq4m.pdf

The Theory and Practice of Imitation in Classical Rhetoric.

Citations

Training advanced writing skills: The case for deliberate practice.

The Rise of Writing: Redefining Mass Literacy

The Racial Politics of Imitation in the Nineteenth Century

Living Chronic: Agency and Expertise in the Rhetoric of Diabetes

Out of Style: Reanimating Stylistic Study in Composition and Rhetoric

Related Papers (5)

Attitudes toward imitation: Classical culture and the modern temper

Literary Criticism and the Concept of Imitation in Antiquity

The Erasure of the Sentence.

Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student

Inventing the University