WRITING ABOUT WRITING - IS IT PERFORMANCE?

I recently Googled “writing about writing” and found that the phrase has spawned an acronym WAW, i.e. a method or theory of teaching composition which puts emphasis on reading and writing about writing in the writing course, and reimagines first-year composition as an "introduction to writing studies."

First-year composition is an introductory core curriculum writing course in North American colleges. This course focuses on improving students' abilities to write in a university setting and introduces students to writing practices in the disciplines and professions. These courses are traditionally required of incoming students, thus the previous name, "Freshman Composition". First-year composition is a discipline of composition studies. Composition studies concerns itself as much with the making of meaning—learning how to marshal facts and opinion to support various points of view—as with the development of standard or "proper" grammar.

The piece goes on: This is not to say WAW advocates teaching a first-year writing course as if it were an introduction to a writing major, but rather it advocates merging the how of writing with its practice. An introduction course to a writing major has both a different audience and purpose than a first-year composition course framed in WAW. The development of WAW is largely credited to Elizabeth Wardle, University of Central Florida, and Douglas Downs, Montana State University, after the publication of their 2007 article "Teaching about Writing, Righting Misconceptions."

A relatively new area of first-year composition, WAW continues to emerge and change as it gains recognition by academics and composition scholars.

Writing about Writing: A College Reader

Published in 2011, Doug Downs’ and Elizabeth Wardle's book is described as “encouraging students to draw on what they know in order to contribute to on-going conversations about writing and literacy.”  In the preface for the instructors, Downs and Wardle describes their frustration with composition courses that are based around themes that have nothing to do with writing. They list several reasons as to why WAW is a "smart choice" in terms of an approach to teaching first-year composition:

•    WAW engages students in a relevant subject

•    WAW engages students' own area of expertise

•    WAW helps students transfer what they learn

•    WAW has been extensively class tested—and it works.

The book addresses several questions geared towards helping the student understand multiple components of writing: Why study writing? How do readers read and writers write? How do you write? How have you become the readers and writer you are today? How do communities shape writing? How do you make yourself heard as college writer? A mixture of selected readings from both scholars, authors, and students are provided, as well as various activities and discussion questions associated with the readings.

ELIZABETH WARDLE is associate professor and Chair of the Department of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Central Florida. Her research interests centre on genre theory, transfer of writing-related knowledge, and infusing composition classrooms with the field's best understandings of how writing works. She is currently conducting a longitudinal study of writing transfer with colleagues from UCF and Auburn University.

DOUG DOWNS is an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition in the Department of English at Montana State University. His research interests centre on research-writing pedagogy and facilitating undergraduate research both in first-year composition and across the undergraduate curriculum. He continues to work extensively with Elizabeth Wardle on writing-about-writing pedagogies and is currently studying problems of researcher authority in undergraduate research in the humanities

Here is some wonderful writing: